Child protection advocates hope a batch of revisions to Pennsylvania’s child abuse laws will make early detection of abuse cases like former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s more likely. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
Pennsylvania legislators are expected to start taking votes this week on a series of bills that, taken together, will modernize the statutory definition of child abuse, strengthen and clarify the obligations of those who come upon it, and break down walls that too often have kept doctors, child welfare agencies and police working in isolation from each other.
No one guarantees perfection.
But if the bills work as intended, supporters say, they will present a distinct silver lining to the sordid Sandusky case: A safer place for Pennsylvania’s children to just be kids.
Most advocates say the result of nearly two years’ work will be worth waiting for.
“It feels as if at the last minute, there’s been this push from those worried about not enough weight being given to parental prerogatives (for child discipline)” said Cathleen Palm, who has monitored the package’s development for the Protect Our Children Committee.
“But on balance and on the whole, these are still huge steps forward for Pennsylvania kids.”
But after months of negotiations and legal fine-tuning, a first wave to be voted this week will revolve around these major prongs.
Redefining child abuse:
The legal definition has been opened up considerably through wording changes like replacing a need to show “serious bodily injury” with plain “bodily injury.” In addition, certain specific acts like burning, cutting off air supply or forcefully shaking an infant will now automatically be considered abusive acts.
The changes are intended to permit more cases of abuse – in a state where “founded” reports have traditionally tracked well below national averages – to get detected earlier and stopped, in the hopes of reducing the number of serious injuries, sexual crimes or deaths through neglect.
It’s a universally shared goal.
But sharing that goal and achieving it in the law are different matters. So there have been clashes in getting this language to the goal line.
Domestic violence prevention advocates, for example, have clashed over provisions that would extend liability for child abuse – and listing as abusers on a state registry – to family members who knew of abusive acts but failed to take action to stop them.
Their argument is that that’s unfair to mothers caught in bad relationships who haven’t reported abuse in the interests – as they see it – of doing the best thing for their child at that moment.
Leaders of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in particular, pushed unsuccessfully for specific exceptions to the new definitions in cases where a family member would have fear of violent retaliation.
If that child is subsequently separated from their care-giving parent based on a child abuse referral, they argued, they will be victimized all over again.
Supporters of the stronger language pushed back, in the interest of putting the child’s interest first.
Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said this week he respects any adult’s right to decide for themselves how to deal with an abusive relationship. “But I have zero tolerance for her right to make that choice for a child.”
Dr. Cindy Christian, a pediatrician at the Childrens Hospital of Pennsylvania who also serves as medical director of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, agreed.
“Children are a special population,” she said. “They can’t advocate for themselves. They don’t have the ability to extricate themselves from a violent situation. They’re too young and too scared.”
In late drafts of the bills, the stronger language on family reporting obligations has remained, but tempered with a new requirement for all abuse findings to be signed off on by county children & youth services directors and their solicitors before being turned over to the state for listing on the registry.
There is also new language that gives those placed on the state registry the opportunity to seek removal from the list with a showing, for example, that they “no longer represent a risk.”
That language, legislative drafters said, is aimed specifically at people like mothers in abusive relationships whose main transgression was failing to stop abuse committed by another.
The changes still have not satisfied leaders of the domestic violence coalition.
“We still firmly believe there are going to be instances where victims of domestic violence will be labeled as child abusers,” said Ellen Kramer, PCADV’s legal director.
Kramer said her coalition will now turn its attention to the implementation of the new laws, including trying to make sure its concerns are heard by children & youth case workers, judges handling custody disputes and the like.
Strengthening and clarifying the mandatory reporting statute.
Under the proposed changes in this area, Sandusky might have been caught 10 years earlier.
The language would require someone like Mike McQueary – the former Penn State assistant who reported a sexual assault by Sandusky to Joe Paterno in 2001 – to report what he saw not only to his direct supervisor at Penn State, but separately to the state Department of Public Welfare’s child abuse hotline service.
That dual reporting track is intended so that the leaders of any specific institution would no longer have the ability to unilaterally sweep a potentially embarrassing incident under the rug, as Penn State’s top administrators from time are now accused.
And it’s just one of the ways lawmakers are striving to close loopholes in Pennsylvania’s mandatory reporting law.
Mandated reporters, for example, would also be newly required to report instances they’ve learned of second-hand, if the allegation includes information about specific acts involving an identifiable child.
This has caused concern among some of the professionals who will have to live with the new laws.
“A lot of times this isn’t very clear, and two health care providers might come to different conclusions ,” said Thomas DeWall, a government relations consultant for the Pennsylvania Psychological Association.
“Now, (given the specter of enhanced penalties), they’re all going to report all kinds of situations and that’s going to flood the system. We think they’re going to be spending lots of resources chasing after reports of child abuse that are unfounded.”
But supporters argue that the bill’s language still gives the would-be reporters latitude to consider the credibility of their source.
Another of the bills set to be considered next week would raise the penalties for failing to report suspected child abuse charge to law enforcement or child welfare authorities.
The charge, a third-degree misdemeanor now, would be upgraded to a second-degree misdemeanor or – in cases of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, or aggravated assault – felony.
Another agreed-to bill would require all licensed professionals required to report suspected child abuse to receive regular training on abuse recognition and the state’s new reporting requirements as part of their ongoing requirements for licensure.
Other bills in the forthcoming package that could make it to Gov. Tom Corbett’s desk this week include:
* A bill requiring counties to create investigative teams to be used in child abuse investigations, with involvement from police, child welfare agencies and medical professionals.
The new teams would be required to establish standard protocols for child abuse probes designed to minimize trauma to children from a prolonged investigation and potential prosecution of a case.
* A bill requiring greater sharing of information between child welfare and law enforcement on child-centered investigations, including child custody cases. Those groups would also be entitled to some greater access to medical reports.
Because of the massive amount of retraining that will be required of child welfare workers, medical professionals, police, teachers and others, most of the new bills won’t take effect until the end of 2014.
That will also give the state Department of Public Welfare the ability to complete pending computer system upgrades that will set the stage for enhanced data sharing.
Still Heckler, Christian and other task force members reached this week said they have been monitoring the progress on the bills over the past year and, thus far, are satisfied with the results.
“From where I sit, I think that they have been very diligent in looking at the work that we gave them and in crafting legislation that really addresses a wide range of issues,” said Christian.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2013-12-09 17:15:552013-12-09 17:16:32Good, but lacks access to justice for CSA victims thru SOL reform
Posted Dec 1, 2013 5:30 AM CST
By Anna Stolley Persky
Illustration by J. Manzo
The victim was 12 when child sex offender Nechemya Weberman first assaulted her. Last January, at age 18, she dabbed at tears in her eyes as she spoke in a Brooklyn courtroom.
For years during and after the abuse, the woman said she would look in the mirror and see “a girl who didn’t want to live in her own skin,” the New York Times reported. “I would cry until the tears ran dry,” she told the court. But now, she said, she can see someone “who finally stood up and spoke out,” on behalf of both herself and “the other silent victims.”
Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, was found guilty in December 2012 of 59 counts of sexual abuse, which carry a maximum combined sentence of 117 years. He was convicted of engaging in sexual misdeeds that included oral sex, groping and acting out pornographic videos, all during the therapy sessions that were meant to help the girl become more religious. The abuse lasted three years.
But as painful as the appearance was at Weberman’s sentencing hearing, so too was the harsh cultural ostracism that the victim and her family suffered for her testimony. As members of the Orthodox Jewish Satmar Hasidic community, the victim told the court, she and her family were harassed and shunned for reporting Weberman, also a member of the Hasidic community. And, according to trial testimony, her parents’ business was threatened, leading to fears that the family would no longer be able to support itself.
The Weberman case is symptomatic of the difficulties that government prosecutors face in bringing sexual assault charges against a member of an insular religious community. As with many communities, the majority of sexual abuse crimes against children go unreported. But in religious communities, the fear of ostracism carries additional weight.
Child abuse experts also say that when there’s one child sexual predator in a religious organization, there could also be more. Sexual predators, they say, tend to hide within a culture or religious hierarchy that either ignores or in some way condones their crimes. Members of religious communities that prefer to resolve their problems internally are particularly disinclined to report sexual predators within their midst, experts say.
“In some ways, religion is a family,” says San Diego forensic psychologist Glenn Lipson, who specializes in sexual misconduct issues. “In families, people can deny something is going on because they don’t want to see it and because admitting it would mean their world would collapse. The same can be true for religious communities, where people celebrate births and marriages together. There can be the same response—deny it, ignore it, reassign people.”
Jack Schaap, the disgraced former pastor of an Indiana megachurch, is serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty to taking a young parishioner across state lines with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. AP Photo/The Times, Kyle Telechan
Recently in Indiana, former First Baptist Church of Hammond pastor Jack Schaap pleaded guilty to having sex with a girl who attended his church. In an investigative piece, Chicagomagazine laid out accusations that the church has a history of “what some call a deeply embedded culture of misogyny and sexual and physical abuse.” Furthermore, the piece discussed a culture that allows for cover-ups of transgressions. “We were taught to not question and to take the ‘man of God’s’ [Schaap’s] word over everything,” said one former member, according to Chicago magazine.
This July, 19 former Yeshiva University High School students filed a federal lawsuit claiming two school rabbis abused them in the 1970s and 1980s. The lawsuit accuses the school’s leadership of ignoring the abuse.
And the vast Roman Catholic Church sexual scandal has shown that childhood sexual abuse can be found in any culture, including one that is founded on religious tenets.
CHANGING POLITICAL EQUATION
“There is a problem that needs to be addressed in society,” says New York City attorney Nathan Dershowitz. “Many religious communities have cultural factors that affect how they react to certain behavior within their community. We in the United States talk about freedom of religion, but we fail to appreciate the way religion affects a community and how it responds to the secular world.”
Marci Hamilton, a law professor specializing in religion and the law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, says there’s mounting political pressure on prosecutors to pursue child sexual abuse cases, no matter what religious group or powerful person is involved.
“My view is that for a long time the public had a Pollyanna attitude toward religion and that Pollyanna attitude toward religion gave cover for religious groups to engage in activities that we now find totally unacceptable,” says Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law.
“But now that we know—through repeated cases and media coverage—that religious leaders are capable of covering up for child predators, the political equation has changed,” Hamilton says. “It is now more politically dangerous to permit the cover-up to continue than it is to prosecute abusers and those who have let abusers have access to children.”
In the Brooklyn case, Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes heralded Weberman’s conviction as a major victory. His office also charged seven Hasidic men with bribery and intimidation of Weberman’s victim, who testified over four days at the trial, the Times reported. Prosecutors say they know of more victims who were too afraid to testify.
“If there is one message to take away from this case, it is that this office will pursue the evil of sexual abuse of a child no matter where it occurs in this county,” Hynes said in a statement. “The abuse of a child cannot be swept under the rug or dealt with by insular groups believing only they know what is best for their community.”
Prosecutors say they were able to encourage the victim to testify by gaining her trust through their Kol Tzedek program, established in 2009 to reach out to ultra-Orthodox communities in a culturally sensitive manner. The program also educates the Orthodox communities about sexual abuse issues and the criminal justice system.
“We put measures in place to make the criminal justice system more responsive to the needs of this community,” says Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the Brooklyn district attorney’s Sex Crimes and Crimes Against Children Division. She adds that her division has been seriously pursuing child sexual abuse cases within Orthodox circles.
But to scholars who study the connection between religion and the law, the Roman Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal exemplifies the wall of silence religious organizations can build. It also provides a valuable lesson, they say, about the enormous consequences of failing to contact outside authorities.
Between 2001 and 2010, the Holy See, the Catholic Church’s ruling body, reviewed allegations concerning about 3,000 priests and covering a 50-year time span. In the U.S. alone there may have been 100,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The scandal broke in 2002 when the Boston Globe reported a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church in the Boston area. Stories that had originally appeared to be about individual cases morphed into a shocking scandal with worldwide implications.
Thousands of adults are still struggling with the psychological damage of childhood abuse at the hands of the clergy. Some estimates suggest that the American church has doled out at least $2.2 billion settling litigation related to the crisis.
The extent of the scandal is still unfolding. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced in March that it would pay nearly $10 million to settle claims of sexual abuse perpetrated by a former priest.
Hamilton says that the Catholic Church scandal has taught the country that sometimes an organization chooses concern over its public reputation over that of the children in the organization.
“We got a wake-up call,” says Hamilton. “Thanks to the public airing of sex abuse cases within the Catholic Church and elsewhere, the public in general—and prosecutors in specific—are less tolerant of allowing religious communities to ‘clean their own dirty laundry.’ ”
The most recent landmark case came last year, when Philadelphia prosecutors convinced a jury to find Monsignor William Lynn, the former secretary for the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, guilty of child endangerment.
Prosecutors accused Lynn of helping to cover up allegations of child sexual abuse by priests in Philadelphia. Lynn received a three-to-six-year jail sentence. However, the jury acquitted Lynn of conspiracy and a second endangerment count. Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham led the initial investigation; R. Seth Williams, the current district attorney, took over when he stepped into office in 2010.
“The Philadelphia district attorney’s office set the gold standard for institution-based child sex abuse cases. It fearlessly investigated the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s practices,” Hamilton says.
Lynne Abraham, a former Philadelphia DA, convened a grand jury investigation that ultimately led to the first conviction of a senior U.S. Catholic official for covering up sexual abuses of children. Photo by David Fonda.
Abraham arranged a special group to pursue allegations against the church. She lined up a team of aggressive prosecutors who also were raised Catholic, so they were familiar with church liturgy and procedures. A grand jury report in 2005 accused the church of a cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.
The investigation continued after Abraham left office. A 2011 grand jury report gave a detailed analysis of how the Philadelphia Archdiocese continued to protect abusive priests. After the report, prosecutors charged Lynn with the cover-up, and four priests and a parochial school teacher with sexual abuse crimes.
The probe took years, Abraham says: “It was hard pick-and-shovel work. That’s what it was—years of digging around. You just have to keep digging. You have to be willing to expend the effort on it.”
Abraham also points out that the team gained the trust of victims by “letting them know that we knew that they had been wronged.”
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia declined to comment for the story.
AN ‘ALTERNATIVE AGENDA’?
The issue of politics also comes into play, observers say, especially when the district attorney is sensitive to the prospects of re-election.
Abraham is proud of the work her office did and says it led to a re-evaluation of how the church hierarchy handles priests who are accused of molesting children. “If you are looking at the next election,” she says, “then obviously you are not going to do it.”
“Prosecutors have to be very brave,” says Abraham, now a partner at Archer & Greiner. “It’s very simple: There’s a lot of lack of guts out there because people don’t want to tangle with a powerful group.”
One of the criticisms of Brooklyn’s Weberman case was that DA Hynes did little for years to aid sex abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox communities.
“The problem in Brooklyn is that the elected district attorney viewed a group that he knew had a problem with abuse as a voting bloc,” Hamilton says. “He worked very hard to avoid offending them. For years, he deferred to their own demands for secrecy and isolation.”
As for allegations of political pandering, Jaus replies: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the Brooklyn DA’s sex crimes division, takes issue with charges that the office failed to aggressively pursue sexual abuse cases within the area’s ultra-Orthodox communities. Photo by Arnold Adler.
Yet prosecutors were concerned that the ultra-Orthodox communities were failing to report sexual abuse cases. Agudath Israel of America, an ultra-Orthodox policy organization, has stated that observant Jews shouldn’t report allegations of abuse to the police unless specifically permitted to do so by a rabbi.
“Some Orthodox communities do not foster a culture of going to the [secular] authorities, nor criticizing another Jew in public. Therefore, there is no outlet for a vulnerable child to report abuse,” Hamilton says.
According to the New York Times, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, explained, “You can destroy a person’s life with a false report.”
Members of the Satmar Hasidic sect were angry that Weberman was dragged through the secular court system. Michael C. Farkas, one of Weberman’s attorneys, says that a “substantial percentage” of the community questioned the girl’s motive and the truth of her testimony.
After the Weberman verdict, Hynes wrote in an opinion piece published in the New York Daily News that he hoped the verdict and sentence “sends a very clear and unmistakable message to people in certain parts of the Orthodox community—it is time to start protecting victims rather than defendants.”
Yet the news headlines, fairly or not, depicted a community that banded together against a victim who chose to speak out against her abuser.
Farkas says that the “popular misconception has been that the community is simply blindly rallying around a member of its own ranks because they don’t want to air their dirty laundry.”
“The truth is that they believe Mr. Weberman to be an innocent man who has been set up.”
Dershowitz claims Hynes has been pursuing an “alternative agenda” of sending a message to the ultra-Orthodox community, rather than doing what prosecutors should be doing—searching for truth.
Jaus responds that “if there is any message, it is that a victim can get justice.”
Dershowitz points out that Weberman’s initial 103-year sentence was “counterproductive to any attempt to get the ultra-Orthodox community to trust the civil authorities.” Farkas declared the sentence “objectively and professionally inappropriate.”
And, in fact, the state’s corrections department cut the sentence by more than half.
Certainly, advocates are concerned that religious organizations have enough autonomy to govern themselves without vendettas by outside law enforcement agencies.
But Jaus says that people in these communities who try to press charges against child sex abusers have faced all kinds of intimidation, including threats against their children’s ability to get an education and the success of their family businesses.
To break through the traditional reticence to submit to secular authorities, prosecutors must be respectful but relentless at the same time, forensic psychologist Lipson says.
Lipson urges caution for prosecutors approaching religious groups.
“You have to realize the building of these relationships will have to be gradual and done with respect for the traditions and convictions of the religious communities,” he says.
In jurisdictions throughout the country, prosecutors have started establishing special programs similar to Brooklyn’s Kol Tzedek to pursue cases within particular religious communities. Abraham advises that prosecutors set up these programs armed with individuals who either are from that religion themselves or have taken the time to learn about the group’s beliefs and culture.
The Catholic Church has enacted numerous policies and procedures to protect children and encourage victims to report the conduct of clergy and church members. The National Review Board, a lay group advising the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently reported that children are safer now than a decade ago, because of a “striking improvement in the church’s response to and treatment of victims.”
Of course, it’s impossible to know how many crimes go unreported and, as part of that, how many crimes occur within religious communities. Some estimates say that one in every four girls and one in every six boys will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18.
“There is a certain slice of the population that commits this crime, and it’s obvious that working with youth gives you an opportunity,” says University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, a leading authority on the law of religious liberty. “Religious organizations are a place where you can work with youth.”
Lipson says that within certain organizations, “those in religious authority will at times abuse their position.”
“In some of these organizations that are very hierarchical and authority-based, leaders are less subject to scrutiny,” he says. “Just as you would not question the center of the belief system, it’s not easy to question those who represent it. Faith gets intertwined with challenging your capacity to question a leader’s conduct.”
But prosecutors, Abraham says, have a duty to break through a community’s inclination to hide from the truth and help conceal an accused molester within their midst. As part of that, prosecutors must hunt down and charge any administrators or religious leaders who fail to protect their most vulnerable members in favor of protecting an accused molester, she says.
CHANGE FROM WITHIN
Besides feisty prosecutors, there are other ways to ensure that religious communities appropriately handle any pedophiles or other sexual predators within their midst and report them to the proper authorities, scholars say.
For example, Hamilton suggests denying tax-exempt status to any organization that makes sex abuse possible. And she believes that the insurance industry needs to do a better job of mandating policies in religious organizations to protect children. In addition, Hamilton and others also propose expanding state statutes of limitations in child sex abuse cases.
One major point of contention concerns those who have a duty to report suspected criminal behavior. Some victims’ rights advocates say that clergy should be required to report suspected criminal behavior, such as child abuse. Generally, lawyers and clergy have to report child abuse if they see it being committed. But traditionally, neither must report child abuse if they learn of it as part of a confidential communication.
In recent years, several states have changed their rules to make clergy the mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.
“We’re in the midst of a revolution to protect children,” says Hamilton. “Adults are not discounting children’s reports the way they used to, and victims are coming forward more confidently than they ever have before. Judges and juries are believing and supporting victims. But it’s not over yet—there is still much to be done to protect every one of our children.”
But perhaps the biggest change of all needs to come from within the religious groups themselves, according to Lipson.
He advises religious organizations to make changes from within, so that they are already ensuring an appropriate attitude toward reporting crime. Religious organizations should opt for transparency and accountability, according to Lipson.
“Religious institutions must have clearly stated policies and procedures. The policies must set up a structure for people to report issues, maintain boundaries and address problems,” Lipson says. “There must be supervision of individual conduct, and the clergy should be even more accountable because of the authority they have and the vulnerability people have when they approach a clergy member. People within an organization need to be trained to recognize red flags—in themselves and others.
“We know evil thrives when good people stand by and do nothing.”
This article originally appeared in the December 2013 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “The Religious Wall of Silence: Prosecutors try different methods to pursue sex assault cases in insular communities.”
Anna Stolley Persky is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
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The announcement was a forthright acknowledgment by the Vatican of the enduring problem of abusive priests, and fit with Francis’ pattern of willingness to set a new tone in the governance of the church nine months into his tenure.
Whether the new commission portends a significant change in how the Vatican deals with abusive priests and their protectors remains to be seen, experts on the church said. Yet the timing of the announcement, two days after a United Nations panel criticized the Vatican over its handling of abuse cases, suggested that the pope and his closest advisers wanted to at least be seen as tackling the issue with greater firmness.
Soon after he became pope, Francis directed the Vatican last April to act decisively on abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, in a meeting with subordinates at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s enforcement arm. But he had said little about the sexual abuse problem since.
“Francis is great on a lot of stuff but hasn’t really done anything about sex abuse cases,” said John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, an American weekly, who frequently reports from the Vatican.
“A lot of people most focused on this issue said that Francis needs to game up,” Mr. Allen said in a telephone interview. “So the P.R. thing to say was, ‘We’re doing something.’ ”
The announcement elicited a mixed reaction, reflecting some skepticism, particularly among victims and their advocates, over whether a new commission would be more than cosmetic.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the coordinating body of bishops in the United States, called the pope’s move “a most welcome initiative.” In a statement, the group said: “Abuse of minors is a sin and a crime, and every step must be taken to eradicate this blight. Such abuse is especially grave when committed by anyone in ministry in our church.”
At the same time, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, the leading United States-based support group for clergy abuse victims, called the news a disappointment that reflected badly on the new pope. David Clohessy, executive director of the group, said the announcement suggested that the Vatican remained strongly resistant to making sexually abusive members of the clergy and their church protectors accountable to external criminal prosecution.
“A new church panel is the last thing that kids need,” Mr. Clohessy said in a telephone interview. “Church officials have mountains of information about those who have committed and those who are concealing horrible child sex crimes and cover-ups. They just have to give that information to the police.”
BishopAccountability.org, an organization that has amassed an enormous collection of documents on the abuse problem in the church, gave a cautious welcome to the announcement, but also expressed skepticism.
“It’s good that the Vatican will be giving this terrible problem high-level and focused attention,” Anne Barrett Doyle, the group’s co-director, said in a statement. “But we are concerned that the commission will be toothless and off-target.”
The suggestion to establish a commission came from the group of eight cardinals brought together by the pope a month after his election in March to advise him on reforming the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.
Precisely who will serve on the advisory commission and what authority it will have remained unclear. But Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the only American among the eight cardinals advising the pope, said it would include priests, men and women from religious orders and laypeople with expertise in safeguarding children, and that it would offer advice on pastoral care rather than judicial functions. That seemed to signal that it would not make proposals for exposing or punishing abusive clerics.
The commission will have a broad mandate including the development of “norms, procedures and strategies for the protection of children and the prevention of abuse of minors,” the Vatican said in a statement.
It could also develop guidelines for cooperating with civil authorities, reporting of crimes and compliance with civil law, the Vatican said. Procedures for “screening and checking of previous offenses” and “the state of action of requests for psychiatric evaluation” could also be examined.
“Up to now, there’s been so much focus on the judicial parts of this, but the pastoral response of the church is very, very important, and the Holy Father is concerned about that,” Cardinal O’Malley said at a news conference at the Vatican. “And so we feel as though having the advantage of a commission of experts that would be able to study some of these issues and bring concrete recommendations for the Holy Father and the Holy See will be very important.”
The cardinal’s diocese in Boston was the center of the sexual abuse scandal in the United States a decade ago. The cardinal also is known to be among the most proactive advisers to Francis in pushing to address the abuse issue more assertively.
While the commission’s powers, precise composition and influence are not yet known, Mr. Allen said, Cardinal O’Malley’s role “suggested that it’s substantive.”
Other Vatican experts expressed caution. John Thavis, the author of “The Vatican Diaries,” a best-selling book about how the Vatican works, said the commission was a “positive step.” But he expressed doubt that it would “revolutionize anything” in how the church deals with sexual abuse cases.
“This is an advisory commission to the pope, and doesn’t have any authority on how its recommendations would be implemented or on issues of how bishops report to local civil authorities,” he said.
This week, the Vatican sidestepped a request from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for information about its handling of abuse cases, saying that the responsibility for such cases rested with individual bishops.
Sexual abuse of children has haunted the Vatican, particularly during the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI, Francis’ predecessor, who often seemed overwhelmed by scandals involving cover-ups of pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse that undermined the church’s moral authority and stature.
In June 2010, Benedict addressed the abuse issue in public, telling priests in St. Peter’s Square, “We, too, insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again.” In 2012, he approved a symposium to discuss ways of preventing the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy.
An aloof theologian, Benedict resigned in February, the first pope to relinquish the Roman Catholic Church’s highest office voluntarily in nearly 600 years. Francis has sought to project a more down-to-earth image, blending personal humility with a readiness to embrace new thinking.
Even as Cardinal O’Malley announced the commission, parts of the church were bracing for new disclosures. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis told its priests that a new report would illuminate the prevalence of abuse in its parishes.
Cardinal O’Malley said the new advisory commission would study existing measures and proposals for “new initiatives” to safeguard children, as well as guidelines for the personal conduct of priests and the creation of safe environments to limit the likelihood of abuse.
Under Benedict, the Vatican asked the bishops of every country to produce a policy on handling abuse cases, and to submit the policies to the Vatican for approval. But not all of them did so; bishops in some parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America said they had little experience or expertise on the issue. By contrast, the church has been calling bishops and officials from English-speaking countries to meetings in Rome for decades to discuss the abuse problem and share their best practices.
The new emphasis on pastoral care for abuse victims may present challenges for the Vatican. Many victims of abuse by priests say they want nothing more to do with the church, and would not feel comfortable receiving counsel or spiritual care from a professional affiliated with the church.
Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Vatican City, Alan Cowell from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from Salt Lake City.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2013-12-06 21:29:172013-12-06 21:29:17Wake me up when he orders the bishops to stand up for access to justice for victims of their priests
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2013-12-06 21:24:522013-12-06 21:25:36Powerful clip of "The Justice Seekers" at Catholics4Change.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Amid mounting public pressure and under order from a court, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Thursday published a list of 34 priests who have been accused of sexually abusing minors.
The list includes the names of eight men who had not been publicly named previously as alleged abusers.
It places the men in two categories: 30 are believed to have molested children, while the remaining four have claims against them that could not be substantiated. For example, one of those four cases involved a sexual relationship with an adult.
“The disclosures made today are not intended to be final,” Archbishop John Nienstedtwrote in his Thursday column in The Catholic Spirit newspaper. “We are currently engaged in a comprehensive review of clergy files, and the list will be updated as additional announcements are made.”
A judge gave the archdiocese until Jan. 6 to disclose information about additional priests accused of molesting kids. Going forward, Nienstedt said, any substantiated claims will be disclosed on the archdiocese website.
Nienstedt has been under fire over allegations that he and other church leaders mishandled cases of clergy sexual misconduct. He said he hoped the disclosure would help victims heal and rebuild trust.
Advocates and victims’ attorneys said the list is incomplete, and Nienstedt’s hand was forced.
“I think this is only a portion of the people that abuse kids in this archdiocese that the archbishop knows about,” said Mike Finnegan, an attorney for victims.
In 2004, the archdiocese compiled a list of 33 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor. The list was part of a nationwide study to determine the scope of clergy sex abuse. Across the country, roughly two dozen archdioceses and dioceses already made such lists public.
The names published Thursday include all 33 from that list, as well as another priest recently convicted of child sex crimes.
The information includes their ages, and, when known, their years of ordination, the parishes where they served, the date they were removed from ministry, their statuses, and the cities where they live.
The archdiocese has said most of the allegations stem from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, though details aren’t published — so it’s unclear what the allegations are, when they were reported, or how long the priests remained in ministry after they came to light.
“Not knowing how many allegations there are, you can’t really judge the assignment record,” said Terry McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org. “Mapping the abuse history onto the career history is super important, and not doing that … creates uncertainty.”
Of the 30 men who have had substantiated claims against them, 16 are permanently removed from ministry, one is listed as leaving the ministry, 11 are dead, and two have been defrocked.
Sixteen men, including some who are now dead, were permanently removed from ministry in 2002 or 2003, when the church sex abuse scandal was at its height.
Three worked in pastoral roles in 11 or more parishes — including one who was in ministry in 16 churches. The archdiocese has said 92 parishes have had at least one accused priest assigned to them at some point — nearly half of the 188 parishes that serve about 825,000 Catholics.
Attorneys for victims of abuse had fought for years to publish the list, arguing it’s in the interest of public safety, and would give victims courage to come forward.
Finnegan said a handful of new victims came forward Thursday and he expects more will follow. About two dozen lawsuits have been filed against the archdiocese since Minnesota loosened its statute of limitations for filing civil claims in child sex abuse cases.
It’s unlikely any of the priests would face criminal charges for older cases, but statute of limitations rules in Minnesota are complex, and there could be exceptions.
Finnegan said one of his next steps will be to make sure priest files — which show the number of victims and when the archdiocese knew about the allegations — are made public so those who reassigned known abusers are held accountable.
“It’s that information that they are keeping secret that protects the higher ups and the archbishop from being exposed,” he said.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2013-12-06 04:25:482014-01-07 23:26:47Needs to happen in every city!
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as the Diocese of Winona, must release the names of 46 priests accused of sexually abusing minors, a Ramsey County District Court judge ruled Monday. He set a deadline of Dec. 17.
Article by: Jean Hopfensperger , Star Tribune
Updated: December 3, 2013 – 10:32 AM
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona must release the names of 46 priests accused of sexually abusing minors, a Ramsey County district judge ruled Monday.
Judge John Van de North ordered that by Dec. 17 the church must provide not just the names of the priests but their year of birth, year of ordination, the parishes they served, their current ministerial status, current residence and whether they are alive.
The Twin Cities archdiocese has held secret the names of 33 credibly accused abusers since it compiled the list in 2004 and won a 2009 ruling allowing the list to remain private. Church officials returned to court Monday seeking permission to disclose the names, following a wave of new clergy sex abuse allegations that have led to the abrupt departures of several top leaders in the local church.
The archdiocese said Monday it welcomed the ruling and pledged to release the list Thursday on its website and in the Catholic Spirit newspaper.
“The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is grateful for the approval of Ramsey County court to release information relating to priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors in our archdiocese,” the archdiocese said in a statement issued Monday night.
The Winona diocese, which had 13 priests on its list, has not offered a timeline for its release.
Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney specializing in clergy sex abuse cases who has been trying to get the lists released, also welcomed Monday’s ruling.
“We are greatly relieved that finally there will be disclosure so children will be protected from further harm and those who have been hurt can come forward,” Anderson said.
Archbishop John Nienstedt has appointed a task force to review the church’s handling of sexual abuse allegations and hired a consultant to review clergy files. Last month, he pledged to make public a partial list of the credibly accused priests.
“The archbishop believes the whole list issue is becoming a distraction,” archdiocese attorney Thomas Wieser told the judge. “The archbishop wants the healing to begin.”
This fall’s allegations have reverberated through the local church and toppled Nienstedt’s vicar general, the Rev. Peter Laird, prompted abrupt resignations from the University of St. Thomas board by former Archbishop Harry Flynn and his former top deputy, the Rev. Kevin McDonough, and forced the removal of two priests from area churches.
In his ruling, Van de North also ordered the release of the names of priests added to the list since the original list was compiled. That list must be filed with the court by Jan. 6, 2014. Another 13 clergy on a similar list compiled by the Winona diocese also must be released.
Church offers to name 29
In court, Wieser offered to provide the information for 29 of the 33 priests on its list, which was compiled a decade ago in response to a new child protection charter created by U.S. bishops. It includes the names of credibly accused clergy from 1950 to 2002.
Wieser said the shorter list could be made public as early as Thursday.
But the judge ordered that information for all 33 priests on the list be filed with the court. If not provided, a detailed explanation must be presented, he said.
Bob Schwiderski, director of the Minnesota chapter of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called the ruling “huge.” It comes on the heels of a change in Minnesota law that gives abuse victims a three-year window to file lawsuits claiming past abuse, removing the statute of limitations that blocked many cases.
“I think this sets a precedent for other courts,” said Schwiderski. “We’ve got 106 credibly accused priests in dioceses of Minnesota. We’ve got 60 to go.”
Every diocese in Minnesota has a list of “credibly accused priests,” and Anderson’s firm has filed lawsuits in each one to pry open the lists. In one of those suits, filed by John Doe, Ramsey County Judge Gregg Johnson ruled that Anderson could not release the names on the list.
There are 26 names on the list in St. Cloud, 17 in Duluth, 12 in New Ulm and five in Crookston, said Mike Finnegan, an attorney at Anderson Advocates law firm.
The majority of dioceses have not made them public. Nationally, about 25 of the nation’s 178 dioceses have released the lists, nearly always as part of legal settlements, said Terry McKiernan, president of Bishop Accountability, a Massachusetts-based group that tracks clergy abuse.
The lists were compiled a decade ago, when U.S. bishops commissioned a national inventory of alleged clergy abuse cases not long after scandals erupted in Boston in 2002. Dioceses were asked to review records over 50 years and submit data for the study, which was released in 2004.
Many names already known
Many names on the list are already known to Minnesotans, said Van de North. Twenty of the 33 names are on Anderson’s website, he said, such as the Rev. Clarence Vavra, the Rev. John T. Brown and the Rev. Thomas Stitts, who has died.
The list mainly relates to reported abuse between the mid-1950s and 1980s, according to the archdiocese statement released Monday. All of the men who will be identified have been permanently removed from ministry.
As for the four priests whom the archdiocese did not want to identify, Wieser said that the archdiocese has hired former Hennepin County Attorney Tom Johnson to examine evidence against three of them, to make sure they were “substantially accused” of sexual abuse.
Anderson asked whether the archdiocese was creating a new standard for releasing priests’ names. Under the 2004 U.S. Bishop’s report, a priest who was “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct was to be included on the list. “Substantially accused” is “raising the bar,” Anderson charged.
As for the “list” of abusive priests from 2002 to today, Wieser said there is only one. That is the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a St. Paul priest now serving prison time for sexually molesting two boys.
The archdiocese stated, however, that “the “disclosures are not intended to be final.” The list will be updated as additional information is acquired through the current clergy review files.
Making public the names of clergy abusers will help heal the wounds of survivors, who often have felt alone in their suffering, said Schwiderski.
“It might not open a floodgate of new victims, but it will open a floodgate of emotions,” said Schwiderski, who was abused by a priest as a boy.
Given the clergy sex abuse cases now on court dockets, making public the list of offending priests could provide information that would be “relevant at trials” for claims of negligent hiring and negligent retention, said Van de North.
“This provides a method, puts a time line on things, and moves things forward,” he said.
Good, but lacks access to justice for CSA victims thru SOL reform
/in Pennsylvania /by SOL ReformPennsylvania lawmakers prepare for votes on child protection upgrades
The Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal had an instant, consciousness-raising effect in the fight against child abuse.
Now, another important goal – sharpening state laws to the strengthen protections for those children who need them most – is coming into sight.
Pennsylvania legislators are expected to start taking votes this week on a series of bills that, taken together, will modernize the statutory definition of child abuse, strengthen and clarify the obligations of those who come upon it, and break down walls that too often have kept doctors, child welfare agencies and police working in isolation from each other.
No one guarantees perfection.
But if the bills work as intended, supporters say, they will present a distinct silver lining to the sordid Sandusky case: A safer place for Pennsylvania’s children to just be kids.
Most advocates say the result of nearly two years’ work will be worth waiting for.
“It feels as if at the last minute, there’s been this push from those worried about not enough weight being given to parental prerogatives (for child discipline)” said Cathleen Palm, who has monitored the package’s development for the Protect Our Children Committee.
“But on balance and on the whole, these are still huge steps forward for Pennsylvania kids.”
Some parts of the package, which flowed from the report and recommendations of a blue-ribbon tax force empaneled after Sandusky’s November 2011 arrest, won’t reach the floor of the House or Senate until next year.
But after months of negotiations and legal fine-tuning, a first wave to be voted this week will revolve around these major prongs.
Redefining child abuse:
The legal definition has been opened up considerably through wording changes like replacing a need to show “serious bodily injury” with plain “bodily injury.” In addition, certain specific acts like burning, cutting off air supply or forcefully shaking an infant will now automatically be considered abusive acts.
The changes are intended to permit more cases of abuse – in a state where “founded” reports have traditionally tracked well below national averages – to get detected earlier and stopped, in the hopes of reducing the number of serious injuries, sexual crimes or deaths through neglect.
It’s a universally shared goal.
But sharing that goal and achieving it in the law are different matters. So there have been clashes in getting this language to the goal line.
Domestic violence prevention advocates, for example, have clashed over provisions that would extend liability for child abuse – and listing as abusers on a state registry – to family members who knew of abusive acts but failed to take action to stop them.
Their argument is that that’s unfair to mothers caught in bad relationships who haven’t reported abuse in the interests – as they see it – of doing the best thing for their child at that moment.
Leaders of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, in particular, pushed unsuccessfully for specific exceptions to the new definitions in cases where a family member would have fear of violent retaliation.
If that child is subsequently separated from their care-giving parent based on a child abuse referral, they argued, they will be victimized all over again.
Supporters of the stronger language pushed back, in the interest of putting the child’s interest first.
Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said this week he respects any adult’s right to decide for themselves how to deal with an abusive relationship. “But I have zero tolerance for her right to make that choice for a child.”
Dr. Cindy Christian, a pediatrician at the Childrens Hospital of Pennsylvania who also serves as medical director of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, agreed.
“Children are a special population,” she said. “They can’t advocate for themselves. They don’t have the ability to extricate themselves from a violent situation. They’re too young and too scared.”
In late drafts of the bills, the stronger language on family reporting obligations has remained, but tempered with a new requirement for all abuse findings to be signed off on by county children & youth services directors and their solicitors before being turned over to the state for listing on the registry.
There is also new language that gives those placed on the state registry the opportunity to seek removal from the list with a showing, for example, that they “no longer represent a risk.”
That language, legislative drafters said, is aimed specifically at people like mothers in abusive relationships whose main transgression was failing to stop abuse committed by another.
The changes still have not satisfied leaders of the domestic violence coalition.
“We still firmly believe there are going to be instances where victims of domestic violence will be labeled as child abusers,” said Ellen Kramer, PCADV’s legal director.
Kramer said her coalition will now turn its attention to the implementation of the new laws, including trying to make sure its concerns are heard by children & youth case workers, judges handling custody disputes and the like.
Strengthening and clarifying the mandatory reporting statute.
Under the proposed changes in this area, Sandusky might have been caught 10 years earlier.
The language would require someone like Mike McQueary – the former Penn State assistant who reported a sexual assault by Sandusky to Joe Paterno in 2001 – to report what he saw not only to his direct supervisor at Penn State, but separately to the state Department of Public Welfare’s child abuse hotline service.
That dual reporting track is intended so that the leaders of any specific institution would no longer have the ability to unilaterally sweep a potentially embarrassing incident under the rug, as Penn State’s top administrators from time are now accused.
And it’s just one of the ways lawmakers are striving to close loopholes in Pennsylvania’s mandatory reporting law.
Mandated reporters, for example, would also be newly required to report instances they’ve learned of second-hand, if the allegation includes information about specific acts involving an identifiable child.
This has caused concern among some of the professionals who will have to live with the new laws.
“A lot of times this isn’t very clear, and two health care providers might come to different conclusions ,” said Thomas DeWall, a government relations consultant for the Pennsylvania Psychological Association.
“Now, (given the specter of enhanced penalties), they’re all going to report all kinds of situations and that’s going to flood the system. We think they’re going to be spending lots of resources chasing after reports of child abuse that are unfounded.”
But supporters argue that the bill’s language still gives the would-be reporters latitude to consider the credibility of their source.
And given the recent cases at Penn State and within the Philadelphia Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, they say it is clear that Pennsylvania’s reporting statutes need to be significantly strengthened.
Another of the bills set to be considered next week would raise the penalties for failing to report suspected child abuse charge to law enforcement or child welfare authorities.
The charge, a third-degree misdemeanor now, would be upgraded to a second-degree misdemeanor or – in cases of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, or aggravated assault – felony.
Another agreed-to bill would require all licensed professionals required to report suspected child abuse to receive regular training on abuse recognition and the state’s new reporting requirements as part of their ongoing requirements for licensure.
Other bills in the forthcoming package that could make it to Gov. Tom Corbett’s desk this week include:
* A bill requiring counties to create investigative teams to be used in child abuse investigations, with involvement from police, child welfare agencies and medical professionals.
The new teams would be required to establish standard protocols for child abuse probes designed to minimize trauma to children from a prolonged investigation and potential prosecution of a case.
* A bill requiring greater sharing of information between child welfare and law enforcement on child-centered investigations, including child custody cases. Those groups would also be entitled to some greater access to medical reports.
Because of the massive amount of retraining that will be required of child welfare workers, medical professionals, police, teachers and others, most of the new bills won’t take effect until the end of 2014.
That will also give the state Department of Public Welfare the ability to complete pending computer system upgrades that will set the stage for enhanced data sharing.
Still Heckler, Christian and other task force members reached this week said they have been monitoring the progress on the bills over the past year and, thus far, are satisfied with the results.
“From where I sit, I think that they have been very diligent in looking at the work that we gave them and in crafting legislation that really addresses a wide range of issues,” said Christian.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/12/pennsylvania_lawmakers_prepare_1.html
Prosecutors battle the wall of silence around sex assault in religious communities
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformProsecutors battle the wall of silence around sex assault in religious communities
Posted Dec 1, 2013 5:30 AM CST
By Anna Stolley Persky
The victim was 12 when child sex offender Nechemya Weberman first assaulted her. Last January, at age 18, she dabbed at tears in her eyes as she spoke in a Brooklyn courtroom.
For years during and after the abuse, the woman said she would look in the mirror and see “a girl who didn’t want to live in her own skin,” the New York Times reported. “I would cry until the tears ran dry,” she told the court. But now, she said, she can see someone “who finally stood up and spoke out,” on behalf of both herself and “the other silent victims.”
Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, was found guilty in December 2012 of 59 counts of sexual abuse, which carry a maximum combined sentence of 117 years. He was convicted of engaging in sexual misdeeds that included oral sex, groping and acting out pornographic videos, all during the therapy sessions that were meant to help the girl become more religious. The abuse lasted three years.
But as painful as the appearance was at Weberman’s sentencing hearing, so too was the harsh cultural ostracism that the victim and her family suffered for her testimony. As members of the Orthodox Jewish Satmar Hasidic community, the victim told the court, she and her family were harassed and shunned for reporting Weberman, also a member of the Hasidic community. And, according to trial testimony, her parents’ business was threatened, leading to fears that the family would no longer be able to support itself.
The Weberman case is symptomatic of the difficulties that government prosecutors face in bringing sexual assault charges against a member of an insular religious community. As with many communities, the majority of sexual abuse crimes against children go unreported. But in religious communities, the fear of ostracism carries additional weight.
Child abuse experts also say that when there’s one child sexual predator in a religious organization, there could also be more. Sexual predators, they say, tend to hide within a culture or religious hierarchy that either ignores or in some way condones their crimes. Members of religious communities that prefer to resolve their problems internally are particularly disinclined to report sexual predators within their midst, experts say.
“In some ways, religion is a family,” says San Diego forensic psychologist Glenn Lipson, who specializes in sexual misconduct issues. “In families, people can deny something is going on because they don’t want to see it and because admitting it would mean their world would collapse. The same can be true for religious communities, where people celebrate births and marriages together. There can be the same response—deny it, ignore it, reassign people.”
Recently in Indiana, former First Baptist Church of Hammond pastor Jack Schaap pleaded guilty to having sex with a girl who attended his church. In an investigative piece, Chicagomagazine laid out accusations that the church has a history of “what some call a deeply embedded culture of misogyny and sexual and physical abuse.” Furthermore, the piece discussed a culture that allows for cover-ups of transgressions. “We were taught to not question and to take the ‘man of God’s’ [Schaap’s] word over everything,” said one former member, according to Chicago magazine.
This July, 19 former Yeshiva University High School students filed a federal lawsuit claiming two school rabbis abused them in the 1970s and 1980s. The lawsuit accuses the school’s leadership of ignoring the abuse.
And the vast Roman Catholic Church sexual scandal has shown that childhood sexual abuse can be found in any culture, including one that is founded on religious tenets.
CHANGING POLITICAL EQUATION
“There is a problem that needs to be addressed in society,” says New York City attorney Nathan Dershowitz. “Many religious communities have cultural factors that affect how they react to certain behavior within their community. We in the United States talk about freedom of religion, but we fail to appreciate the way religion affects a community and how it responds to the secular world.”
Marci Hamilton, a law professor specializing in religion and the law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, says there’s mounting political pressure on prosecutors to pursue child sexual abuse cases, no matter what religious group or powerful person is involved.
“My view is that for a long time the public had a Pollyanna attitude toward religion and that Pollyanna attitude toward religion gave cover for religious groups to engage in activities that we now find totally unacceptable,” says Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law.
“But now that we know—through repeated cases and media coverage—that religious leaders are capable of covering up for child predators, the political equation has changed,” Hamilton says. “It is now more politically dangerous to permit the cover-up to continue than it is to prosecute abusers and those who have let abusers have access to children.”
In the Brooklyn case, Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes heralded Weberman’s conviction as a major victory. His office also charged seven Hasidic men with bribery and intimidation of Weberman’s victim, who testified over four days at the trial, the Times reported. Prosecutors say they know of more victims who were too afraid to testify.
“If there is one message to take away from this case, it is that this office will pursue the evil of sexual abuse of a child no matter where it occurs in this county,” Hynes said in a statement. “The abuse of a child cannot be swept under the rug or dealt with by insular groups believing only they know what is best for their community.”
Prosecutors say they were able to encourage the victim to testify by gaining her trust through their Kol Tzedek program, established in 2009 to reach out to ultra-Orthodox communities in a culturally sensitive manner. The program also educates the Orthodox communities about sexual abuse issues and the criminal justice system.
“We put measures in place to make the criminal justice system more responsive to the needs of this community,” says Rhonnie Jaus, chief of the Brooklyn district attorney’s Sex Crimes and Crimes Against Children Division. She adds that her division has been seriously pursuing child sexual abuse cases within Orthodox circles.
But to scholars who study the connection between religion and the law, the Roman Catholic Church’s child sex abuse scandal exemplifies the wall of silence religious organizations can build. It also provides a valuable lesson, they say, about the enormous consequences of failing to contact outside authorities.
Between 2001 and 2010, the Holy See, the Catholic Church’s ruling body, reviewed allegations concerning about 3,000 priests and covering a 50-year time span. In the U.S. alone there may have been 100,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse, according to the National Catholic Reporter.
The scandal broke in 2002 when the Boston Globe reported a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church in the Boston area. Stories that had originally appeared to be about individual cases morphed into a shocking scandal with worldwide implications.
Thousands of adults are still struggling with the psychological damage of childhood abuse at the hands of the clergy. Some estimates suggest that the American church has doled out at least $2.2 billion settling litigation related to the crisis.
The extent of the scandal is still unfolding. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced in March that it would pay nearly $10 million to settle claims of sexual abuse perpetrated by a former priest.
Hamilton says that the Catholic Church scandal has taught the country that sometimes an organization chooses concern over its public reputation over that of the children in the organization.
“We got a wake-up call,” says Hamilton. “Thanks to the public airing of sex abuse cases within the Catholic Church and elsewhere, the public in general—and prosecutors in specific—are less tolerant of allowing religious communities to ‘clean their own dirty laundry.’ ”
The most recent landmark case came last year, when Philadelphia prosecutors convinced a jury to find Monsignor William Lynn, the former secretary for the clergy for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, guilty of child endangerment.
Prosecutors accused Lynn of helping to cover up allegations of child sexual abuse by priests in Philadelphia. Lynn received a three-to-six-year jail sentence. However, the jury acquitted Lynn of conspiracy and a second endangerment count. Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham led the initial investigation; R. Seth Williams, the current district attorney, took over when he stepped into office in 2010.
“The Philadelphia district attorney’s office set the gold standard for institution-based child sex abuse cases. It fearlessly investigated the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s practices,” Hamilton says.
Abraham arranged a special group to pursue allegations against the church. She lined up a team of aggressive prosecutors who also were raised Catholic, so they were familiar with church liturgy and procedures. A grand jury report in 2005 accused the church of a cover-up of sexual abuse by priests.
The investigation continued after Abraham left office. A 2011 grand jury report gave a detailed analysis of how the Philadelphia Archdiocese continued to protect abusive priests. After the report, prosecutors charged Lynn with the cover-up, and four priests and a parochial school teacher with sexual abuse crimes.
The probe took years, Abraham says: “It was hard pick-and-shovel work. That’s what it was—years of digging around. You just have to keep digging. You have to be willing to expend the effort on it.”
Abraham also points out that the team gained the trust of victims by “letting them know that we knew that they had been wronged.”
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia declined to comment for the story.
AN ‘ALTERNATIVE AGENDA’?
The issue of politics also comes into play, observers say, especially when the district attorney is sensitive to the prospects of re-election.
Abraham is proud of the work her office did and says it led to a re-evaluation of how the church hierarchy handles priests who are accused of molesting children. “If you are looking at the next election,” she says, “then obviously you are not going to do it.”
“Prosecutors have to be very brave,” says Abraham, now a partner at Archer & Greiner. “It’s very simple: There’s a lot of lack of guts out there because people don’t want to tangle with a powerful group.”
One of the criticisms of Brooklyn’s Weberman case was that DA Hynes did little for years to aid sex abuse victims in the ultra-Orthodox communities.
“The problem in Brooklyn is that the elected district attorney viewed a group that he knew had a problem with abuse as a voting bloc,” Hamilton says. “He worked very hard to avoid offending them. For years, he deferred to their own demands for secrecy and isolation.”
As for allegations of political pandering, Jaus replies: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Yet prosecutors were concerned that the ultra-Orthodox communities were failing to report sexual abuse cases. Agudath Israel of America, an ultra-Orthodox policy organization, has stated that observant Jews shouldn’t report allegations of abuse to the police unless specifically permitted to do so by a rabbi.
“Some Orthodox communities do not foster a culture of going to the [secular] authorities, nor criticizing another Jew in public. Therefore, there is no outlet for a vulnerable child to report abuse,” Hamilton says.
According to the New York Times, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel, explained, “You can destroy a person’s life with a false report.”
Members of the Satmar Hasidic sect were angry that Weberman was dragged through the secular court system. Michael C. Farkas, one of Weberman’s attorneys, says that a “substantial percentage” of the community questioned the girl’s motive and the truth of her testimony.
After the Weberman verdict, Hynes wrote in an opinion piece published in the New York Daily News that he hoped the verdict and sentence “sends a very clear and unmistakable message to people in certain parts of the Orthodox community—it is time to start protecting victims rather than defendants.”
Yet the news headlines, fairly or not, depicted a community that banded together against a victim who chose to speak out against her abuser.
Farkas says that the “popular misconception has been that the community is simply blindly rallying around a member of its own ranks because they don’t want to air their dirty laundry.”
“The truth is that they believe Mr. Weberman to be an innocent man who has been set up.”
Dershowitz claims Hynes has been pursuing an “alternative agenda” of sending a message to the ultra-Orthodox community, rather than doing what prosecutors should be doing—searching for truth.
Jaus responds that “if there is any message, it is that a victim can get justice.”
Dershowitz points out that Weberman’s initial 103-year sentence was “counterproductive to any attempt to get the ultra-Orthodox community to trust the civil authorities.” Farkas declared the sentence “objectively and professionally inappropriate.”
And, in fact, the state’s corrections department cut the sentence by more than half.
Certainly, advocates are concerned that religious organizations have enough autonomy to govern themselves without vendettas by outside law enforcement agencies.
But Jaus says that people in these communities who try to press charges against child sex abusers have faced all kinds of intimidation, including threats against their children’s ability to get an education and the success of their family businesses.
To break through the traditional reticence to submit to secular authorities, prosecutors must be respectful but relentless at the same time, forensic psychologist Lipson says.
Lipson urges caution for prosecutors approaching religious groups.
“You have to realize the building of these relationships will have to be gradual and done with respect for the traditions and convictions of the religious communities,” he says.
In jurisdictions throughout the country, prosecutors have started establishing special programs similar to Brooklyn’s Kol Tzedek to pursue cases within particular religious communities. Abraham advises that prosecutors set up these programs armed with individuals who either are from that religion themselves or have taken the time to learn about the group’s beliefs and culture.
The Catholic Church has enacted numerous policies and procedures to protect children and encourage victims to report the conduct of clergy and church members. The National Review Board, a lay group advising the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently reported that children are safer now than a decade ago, because of a “striking improvement in the church’s response to and treatment of victims.”
Of course, it’s impossible to know how many crimes go unreported and, as part of that, how many crimes occur within religious communities. Some estimates say that one in every four girls and one in every six boys will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18.
“There is a certain slice of the population that commits this crime, and it’s obvious that working with youth gives you an opportunity,” says University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, a leading authority on the law of religious liberty. “Religious organizations are a place where you can work with youth.”
Lipson says that within certain organizations, “those in religious authority will at times abuse their position.”
“In some of these organizations that are very hierarchical and authority-based, leaders are less subject to scrutiny,” he says. “Just as you would not question the center of the belief system, it’s not easy to question those who represent it. Faith gets intertwined with challenging your capacity to question a leader’s conduct.”
But prosecutors, Abraham says, have a duty to break through a community’s inclination to hide from the truth and help conceal an accused molester within their midst. As part of that, prosecutors must hunt down and charge any administrators or religious leaders who fail to protect their most vulnerable members in favor of protecting an accused molester, she says.
CHANGE FROM WITHIN
Besides feisty prosecutors, there are other ways to ensure that religious communities appropriately handle any pedophiles or other sexual predators within their midst and report them to the proper authorities, scholars say.
For example, Hamilton suggests denying tax-exempt status to any organization that makes sex abuse possible. And she believes that the insurance industry needs to do a better job of mandating policies in religious organizations to protect children. In addition, Hamilton and others also propose expanding state statutes of limitations in child sex abuse cases.
One major point of contention concerns those who have a duty to report suspected criminal behavior. Some victims’ rights advocates say that clergy should be required to report suspected criminal behavior, such as child abuse. Generally, lawyers and clergy have to report child abuse if they see it being committed. But traditionally, neither must report child abuse if they learn of it as part of a confidential communication.
In recent years, several states have changed their rules to make clergy the mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.
“We’re in the midst of a revolution to protect children,” says Hamilton. “Adults are not discounting children’s reports the way they used to, and victims are coming forward more confidently than they ever have before. Judges and juries are believing and supporting victims. But it’s not over yet—there is still much to be done to protect every one of our children.”
But perhaps the biggest change of all needs to come from within the religious groups themselves, according to Lipson.
He advises religious organizations to make changes from within, so that they are already ensuring an appropriate attitude toward reporting crime. Religious organizations should opt for transparency and accountability, according to Lipson.
“Religious institutions must have clearly stated policies and procedures. The policies must set up a structure for people to report issues, maintain boundaries and address problems,” Lipson says. “There must be supervision of individual conduct, and the clergy should be even more accountable because of the authority they have and the vulnerability people have when they approach a clergy member. People within an organization need to be trained to recognize red flags—in themselves and others.
“We know evil thrives when good people stand by and do nothing.”
This article originally appeared in the December 2013 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “The Religious Wall of Silence: Prosecutors try different methods to pursue sex assault cases in insular communities.”
Anna Stolley Persky is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
Wake me up when he orders the bishops to stand up for access to justice for victims of their priests
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformVATICAN CITY — In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims, the Vatican said Thursday.
The announcement was a forthright acknowledgment by the Vatican of the enduring problem of abusive priests, and fit with Francis’ pattern of willingness to set a new tone in the governance of the church nine months into his tenure.
Whether the new commission portends a significant change in how the Vatican deals with abusive priests and their protectors remains to be seen, experts on the church said. Yet the timing of the announcement, two days after a United Nations panel criticized the Vatican over its handling of abuse cases, suggested that the pope and his closest advisers wanted to at least be seen as tackling the issue with greater firmness.
Soon after he became pope, Francis directed the Vatican last April to act decisively on abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, in a meeting with subordinates at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s enforcement arm. But he had said little about the sexual abuse problem since.
“Francis is great on a lot of stuff but hasn’t really done anything about sex abuse cases,” said John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter, an American weekly, who frequently reports from the Vatican.
“A lot of people most focused on this issue said that Francis needs to game up,” Mr. Allen said in a telephone interview. “So the P.R. thing to say was, ‘We’re doing something.’ ”
The announcement elicited a mixed reaction, reflecting some skepticism, particularly among victims and their advocates, over whether a new commission would be more than cosmetic.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the coordinating body of bishops in the United States, called the pope’s move “a most welcome initiative.” In a statement, the group said: “Abuse of minors is a sin and a crime, and every step must be taken to eradicate this blight. Such abuse is especially grave when committed by anyone in ministry in our church.”
At the same time, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, the leading United States-based support group for clergy abuse victims, called the news a disappointment that reflected badly on the new pope. David Clohessy, executive director of the group, said the announcement suggested that the Vatican remained strongly resistant to making sexually abusive members of the clergy and their church protectors accountable to external criminal prosecution.
“A new church panel is the last thing that kids need,” Mr. Clohessy said in a telephone interview. “Church officials have mountains of information about those who have committed and those who are concealing horrible child sex crimes and cover-ups. They just have to give that information to the police.”
BishopAccountability.org, an organization that has amassed an enormous collection of documents on the abuse problem in the church, gave a cautious welcome to the announcement, but also expressed skepticism.
“It’s good that the Vatican will be giving this terrible problem high-level and focused attention,” Anne Barrett Doyle, the group’s co-director, said in a statement. “But we are concerned that the commission will be toothless and off-target.”
The suggestion to establish a commission came from the group of eight cardinals brought together by the pope a month after his election in March to advise him on reforming the Vatican’s labyrinthine bureaucracy.
Precisely who will serve on the advisory commission and what authority it will have remained unclear. But Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the only American among the eight cardinals advising the pope, said it would include priests, men and women from religious orders and laypeople with expertise in safeguarding children, and that it would offer advice on pastoral care rather than judicial functions. That seemed to signal that it would not make proposals for exposing or punishing abusive clerics.
The commission will have a broad mandate including the development of “norms, procedures and strategies for the protection of children and the prevention of abuse of minors,” the Vatican said in a statement.
It could also develop guidelines for cooperating with civil authorities, reporting of crimes and compliance with civil law, the Vatican said. Procedures for “screening and checking of previous offenses” and “the state of action of requests for psychiatric evaluation” could also be examined.
“Up to now, there’s been so much focus on the judicial parts of this, but the pastoral response of the church is very, very important, and the Holy Father is concerned about that,” Cardinal O’Malley said at a news conference at the Vatican. “And so we feel as though having the advantage of a commission of experts that would be able to study some of these issues and bring concrete recommendations for the Holy Father and the Holy See will be very important.”
The cardinal’s diocese in Boston was the center of the sexual abuse scandal in the United States a decade ago. The cardinal also is known to be among the most proactive advisers to Francis in pushing to address the abuse issue more assertively.
While the commission’s powers, precise composition and influence are not yet known, Mr. Allen said, Cardinal O’Malley’s role “suggested that it’s substantive.”
Other Vatican experts expressed caution. John Thavis, the author of “The Vatican Diaries,” a best-selling book about how the Vatican works, said the commission was a “positive step.” But he expressed doubt that it would “revolutionize anything” in how the church deals with sexual abuse cases.
“This is an advisory commission to the pope, and doesn’t have any authority on how its recommendations would be implemented or on issues of how bishops report to local civil authorities,” he said.
This week, the Vatican sidestepped a request from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for information about its handling of abuse cases, saying that the responsibility for such cases rested with individual bishops.
Sexual abuse of children has haunted the Vatican, particularly during the eight-year papacy of Benedict XVI, Francis’ predecessor, who often seemed overwhelmed by scandals involving cover-ups of pedophilia and other forms of sexual abuse that undermined the church’s moral authority and stature.
In June 2010, Benedict addressed the abuse issue in public, telling priests in St. Peter’s Square, “We, too, insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again.” In 2012, he approved a symposium to discuss ways of preventing the sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy.
An aloof theologian, Benedict resigned in February, the first pope to relinquish the Roman Catholic Church’s highest office voluntarily in nearly 600 years. Francis has sought to project a more down-to-earth image, blending personal humility with a readiness to embrace new thinking.
Even as Cardinal O’Malley announced the commission, parts of the church were bracing for new disclosures. The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis told its priests that a new report would illuminate the prevalence of abuse in its parishes.
Cardinal O’Malley said the new advisory commission would study existing measures and proposals for “new initiatives” to safeguard children, as well as guidelines for the personal conduct of priests and the creation of safe environments to limit the likelihood of abuse.
Under Benedict, the Vatican asked the bishops of every country to produce a policy on handling abuse cases, and to submit the policies to the Vatican for approval. But not all of them did so; bishops in some parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America said they had little experience or expertise on the issue. By contrast, the church has been calling bishops and officials from English-speaking countries to meetings in Rome for decades to discuss the abuse problem and share their best practices.
The new emphasis on pastoral care for abuse victims may present challenges for the Vatican. Many victims of abuse by priests say they want nothing more to do with the church, and would not feel comfortable receiving counsel or spiritual care from a professional affiliated with the church.
Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Vatican City, Alan Cowell from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from Salt Lake City.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/world/europe/pope-setting-up-commission-on-clerical-child-abuse.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
VATICAN CITY — In his first concrete step to address the clerical sexual-abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis will establish a commission to advise him on protecting children from pedophile priests and on how to counsel victims, the Vatican said Thursday.
Powerful clip of “The Justice Seekers” at Catholics4Change.
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformPowerful clip of “The Justice Seekers” at Catholics4Change.
2013 AbleCine Documentary Grant – The Justice Seekers from Annie MacGregor on Vimeo.
Needs to happen in every city!
/in Minnesota, MN Post Window /by SOL ReformMinn. archdiocese posts list of accused priests
By AMY FORLITI, Associated Press
Updated 4:37 pm, Thursday, December 5, 2013
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Minn-archdiocese-posts-list-of-accused-priests-5036699.php
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Amid mounting public pressure and under order from a court, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis on Thursday published a list of 34 priests who have been accused of sexually abusing minors.
The list includes the names of eight men who had not been publicly named previously as alleged abusers.
It places the men in two categories: 30 are believed to have molested children, while the remaining four have claims against them that could not be substantiated. For example, one of those four cases involved a sexual relationship with an adult.
“The disclosures made today are not intended to be final,” Archbishop John Nienstedtwrote in his Thursday column in The Catholic Spirit newspaper. “We are currently engaged in a comprehensive review of clergy files, and the list will be updated as additional announcements are made.”
A judge gave the archdiocese until Jan. 6 to disclose information about additional priests accused of molesting kids. Going forward, Nienstedt said, any substantiated claims will be disclosed on the archdiocese website.
Nienstedt has been under fire over allegations that he and other church leaders mishandled cases of clergy sexual misconduct. He said he hoped the disclosure would help victims heal and rebuild trust.
Advocates and victims’ attorneys said the list is incomplete, and Nienstedt’s hand was forced.
“I think this is only a portion of the people that abuse kids in this archdiocese that the archbishop knows about,” said Mike Finnegan, an attorney for victims.
In 2004, the archdiocese compiled a list of 33 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor. The list was part of a nationwide study to determine the scope of clergy sex abuse. Across the country, roughly two dozen archdioceses and dioceses already made such lists public.
The names published Thursday include all 33 from that list, as well as another priest recently convicted of child sex crimes.
The information includes their ages, and, when known, their years of ordination, the parishes where they served, the date they were removed from ministry, their statuses, and the cities where they live.
The archdiocese has said most of the allegations stem from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, though details aren’t published — so it’s unclear what the allegations are, when they were reported, or how long the priests remained in ministry after they came to light.
“Not knowing how many allegations there are, you can’t really judge the assignment record,” said Terry McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org. “Mapping the abuse history onto the career history is super important, and not doing that … creates uncertainty.”
Of the 30 men who have had substantiated claims against them, 16 are permanently removed from ministry, one is listed as leaving the ministry, 11 are dead, and two have been defrocked.
Sixteen men, including some who are now dead, were permanently removed from ministry in 2002 or 2003, when the church sex abuse scandal was at its height.
Three worked in pastoral roles in 11 or more parishes — including one who was in ministry in 16 churches. The archdiocese has said 92 parishes have had at least one accused priest assigned to them at some point — nearly half of the 188 parishes that serve about 825,000 Catholics.
Attorneys for victims of abuse had fought for years to publish the list, arguing it’s in the interest of public safety, and would give victims courage to come forward.
Finnegan said a handful of new victims came forward Thursday and he expects more will follow. About two dozen lawsuits have been filed against the archdiocese since Minnesota loosened its statute of limitations for filing civil claims in child sex abuse cases.
It’s unlikely any of the priests would face criminal charges for older cases, but statute of limitations rules in Minnesota are complex, and there could be exceptions.
Finnegan said one of his next steps will be to make sure priest files — which show the number of victims and when the archdiocese knew about the allegations — are made public so those who reassigned known abusers are held accountable.
“It’s that information that they are keeping secret that protects the higher ups and the archbishop from being exposed,” he said.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Minn-archdiocese-posts-list-of-accused-priests-5036699.php
Fruits of MN window….
/in Minnesota, MN Post Window /by SOL ReformTwo Minnesota Catholic dioceses told to release lists of accused priests
http://m.startribune.com/?id=234081431
Article by: Jean Hopfensperger , Star Tribune
Updated: December 3, 2013 – 10:32 AM
The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the Diocese of Winona must release the names of 46 priests accused of sexually abusing minors, a Ramsey County district judge ruled Monday.
Judge John Van de North ordered that by Dec. 17 the church must provide not just the names of the priests but their year of birth, year of ordination, the parishes they served, their current ministerial status, current residence and whether they are alive.
The Twin Cities archdiocese has held secret the names of 33 credibly accused abusers since it compiled the list in 2004 and won a 2009 ruling allowing the list to remain private. Church officials returned to court Monday seeking permission to disclose the names, following a wave of new clergy sex abuse allegations that have led to the abrupt departures of several top leaders in the local church.
The archdiocese said Monday it welcomed the ruling and pledged to release the list Thursday on its website and in the Catholic Spirit newspaper.
“The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is grateful for the approval of Ramsey County court to release information relating to priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors in our archdiocese,” the archdiocese said in a statement issued Monday night.
The Winona diocese, which had 13 priests on its list, has not offered a timeline for its release.
Jeff Anderson, a St. Paul attorney specializing in clergy sex abuse cases who has been trying to get the lists released, also welcomed Monday’s ruling.
“We are greatly relieved that finally there will be disclosure so children will be protected from further harm and those who have been hurt can come forward,” Anderson said.
Archbishop John Nienstedt has appointed a task force to review the church’s handling of sexual abuse allegations and hired a consultant to review clergy files. Last month, he pledged to make public a partial list of the credibly accused priests.
“The archbishop believes the whole list issue is becoming a distraction,” archdiocese attorney Thomas Wieser told the judge. “The archbishop wants the healing to begin.”
This fall’s allegations have reverberated through the local church and toppled Nienstedt’s vicar general, the Rev. Peter Laird, prompted abrupt resignations from the University of St. Thomas board by former Archbishop Harry Flynn and his former top deputy, the Rev. Kevin McDonough, and forced the removal of two priests from area churches.
In his ruling, Van de North also ordered the release of the names of priests added to the list since the original list was compiled. That list must be filed with the court by Jan. 6, 2014. Another 13 clergy on a similar list compiled by the Winona diocese also must be released.
Church offers to name 29
In court, Wieser offered to provide the information for 29 of the 33 priests on its list, which was compiled a decade ago in response to a new child protection charter created by U.S. bishops. It includes the names of credibly accused clergy from 1950 to 2002.
Wieser said the shorter list could be made public as early as Thursday.
But the judge ordered that information for all 33 priests on the list be filed with the court. If not provided, a detailed explanation must be presented, he said.
Bob Schwiderski, director of the Minnesota chapter of Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), called the ruling “huge.” It comes on the heels of a change in Minnesota law that gives abuse victims a three-year window to file lawsuits claiming past abuse, removing the statute of limitations that blocked many cases.
“I think this sets a precedent for other courts,” said Schwiderski. “We’ve got 106 credibly accused priests in dioceses of Minnesota. We’ve got 60 to go.”
Every diocese in Minnesota has a list of “credibly accused priests,” and Anderson’s firm has filed lawsuits in each one to pry open the lists. In one of those suits, filed by John Doe, Ramsey County Judge Gregg Johnson ruled that Anderson could not release the names on the list.
There are 26 names on the list in St. Cloud, 17 in Duluth, 12 in New Ulm and five in Crookston, said Mike Finnegan, an attorney at Anderson Advocates law firm.
The majority of dioceses have not made them public. Nationally, about 25 of the nation’s 178 dioceses have released the lists, nearly always as part of legal settlements, said Terry McKiernan, president of Bishop Accountability, a Massachusetts-based group that tracks clergy abuse.
The lists were compiled a decade ago, when U.S. bishops commissioned a national inventory of alleged clergy abuse cases not long after scandals erupted in Boston in 2002. Dioceses were asked to review records over 50 years and submit data for the study, which was released in 2004.
Many names already known
Many names on the list are already known to Minnesotans, said Van de North. Twenty of the 33 names are on Anderson’s website, he said, such as the Rev. Clarence Vavra, the Rev. John T. Brown and the Rev. Thomas Stitts, who has died.
The list mainly relates to reported abuse between the mid-1950s and 1980s, according to the archdiocese statement released Monday. All of the men who will be identified have been permanently removed from ministry.
As for the four priests whom the archdiocese did not want to identify, Wieser said that the archdiocese has hired former Hennepin County Attorney Tom Johnson to examine evidence against three of them, to make sure they were “substantially accused” of sexual abuse.
Anderson asked whether the archdiocese was creating a new standard for releasing priests’ names. Under the 2004 U.S. Bishop’s report, a priest who was “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct was to be included on the list. “Substantially accused” is “raising the bar,” Anderson charged.
As for the “list” of abusive priests from 2002 to today, Wieser said there is only one. That is the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a St. Paul priest now serving prison time for sexually molesting two boys.
The archdiocese stated, however, that “the “disclosures are not intended to be final.” The list will be updated as additional information is acquired through the current clergy review files.
Making public the names of clergy abusers will help heal the wounds of survivors, who often have felt alone in their suffering, said Schwiderski.
“It might not open a floodgate of new victims, but it will open a floodgate of emotions,” said Schwiderski, who was abused by a priest as a boy.
Given the clergy sex abuse cases now on court dockets, making public the list of offending priests could provide information that would be “relevant at trials” for claims of negligent hiring and negligent retention, said Van de North.
“This provides a method, puts a time line on things, and moves things forward,” he said.
Jean Hopfensperger • 612-673-4511
http://m.startribune.com/?id=234081431