Philadelphia prosecutors urged a state appellate court on Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn what had been the first conviction nationwide of a Roman Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
District Attorney Seth Williams asked Superior Court for a chance to reargue the case against Msgr. William J. Lynn in front of all nine judges.
His request came a week after a three-judge panel ordered a new trial for Lynn, continuing an up-and-down legal fight for the 64-year-old prelate three years after his conviction on child endangerment charges.
“We will continue to fight to keep Msgr. Lynn in state custody, where he belongs,” Williams told reporters. “We have to do all that we can – especially when an institution uses institutional power to protect pedophiles.”
Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said the move by Williams’ office was not entirely unexpected.
“This is like a never-ending saga,” he said. “Hopefully, the Superior Court’s opinion will stand.”
In tossing Lynn’s conviction last week, Superior Court took issue with evidence prosecutors introduced at Lynn’s 2012 trial in an attempt to prove that the Philadelphia Archdiocese historically mishandled child-abuse complaints involving area priests.
Some files shown to jurors from the archdiocese’s “secret archive” dated back to the 1940s, preceding by decades Lynn’s tenure as the official in charge of handling sex abuse cases.
Lynn had been charged with mishandling decisions involving one specific priest – the Rev. Edward J. Avery – who had a history of sexually abusing children. Despite previous allegations against Avery, Lynn allowed him to live in a Northeast rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty to the 1999 attack and is serving five years in prison.
Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, who presided over Lynn’s original trial, ruled that the historic evidence of the church’s treatment of accused priests offered insight into Lynn’s decision-making once he took over as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy in 1992. It also shed light on the archdiocese’s practice of protecting its own institutional interests by covering up abuse complaints, Sarmina found.
However, Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the Superior Court majority last week, described such evidence as “unfairly prejudicial,” and sided with Lynn’s argument that it effectively turned him into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church.
Williams defended Sarmina’s decision at a news conference Monday in which he sought to couch the case in a larger discussion of child sex abuse involving perpetrators who are known to their victims.
“The evidence presented at trial showed the jury and the world that [Lynn’s] handling of Father Avery was completely typical of his handling of other similar predator priests and established that he knew just how dangerous such priests were,” he said.
If pressed, the district attorney added, his office was prepared to try the case against Lynn again in Common Pleas Court.
Lynn remains housed in a state prison in Waymart, northeast of Scranton, having completed more than two years of his three- to six-year term.
The same appellate court panel tossed Lynn’s conviction once before, finding in 2013 that he had been improperly charged under a law that did not apply at the time of his alleged crimes. That legal victory was short-lived, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned that decision and reinstated the jury’s guilty verdict this year.
Last week’s Superior Court ruling threw out Lynn’s conviction under a different argument – one of 10 made by his lawyers – but did not address Lynn’s eight remaining claims.
In its court filings Monday, Williams’ office urged Superior Court to settle all 10 of the monsignor’s arguments to prevent “years of unnecessary litigation” as the case moves between the appellate courts.
In the meantime, Bergstrom, Lynn’s lawyer, has petitioned Sarmina to order his client’s release.
A hearing on that request has not yet been scheduled, but Williams said Monday he planned to push back against it.
Full article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/363649181.html
Two women suing the U.S. government over a deal cut with a politically connected billionaire in an underage-sex case last decade are demanding that FBI agents and prosecutors — including the top federal prosecutor for Southern Florida at the time — be required to testify about whether victims were deliberately kept in the dark about provisions of the controversial plea bargain for investor Jeffrey Epstein.
In a motion filed in federal court in West Palm Beach, lawyers for the two women pressing the lawsuit say depositions are needed from former U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, two FBI agents, two former prosecutors and one current prosecutor because written evidence does not indicate what victims were told about the deal that ruled out a federal prosecution of Epstein.
After a hard-fought, behind-the-scenes legal battle involving some of America’s most prominent defense attorneys, including Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr and Roy Black, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor for prostitution. Epstein received an 18-month sentence in county jail and was released after 13 months.
However, soon after the deal was cut in 2008, two women (identified only as Jane Does) filed suit claiming that the decision to forgo federal prosecution violated a federal law — the Crime Victims Rights Act — because they and other teenagers Epstein paid for sex were never adequately consulted about the plea deal or given an opportunity to object to it.
“The victims have now secured various emails and letters between the Government and defense counsel for Epstein. But that discovery does not directly shed light on several critical issues in the case,” victims’ attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell wrote in the motion seeking testimony from the prosecutors and FBI agents. “There appears to be no clear documentary record as to what the Government is contending that its agents told the victims.”
The women’s lawyers also say the depositions could shed light on a startling defense the government offered at a recent court hearing: that the women don’t qualify legally as victims because they allegedly helped procure other teens for sex with Epstein.
“Apparently the Government believes that because Epstein pressured some of his young victims into performing sexual acts, those victims themselves were complicit in Epstein’s crimes and therefore are barred from seeking relief under the CVRA,” Edwards and Cassell wrote. “Given that this argument rests on internal ‘accusations’
not revealed in documentary evidence, the only way for the victims to explore this newly-raised argument is by deposing the prosecutors on this subject.”
The government plans to oppose the depositions, according to the defense. Acosta, now dean of the law school at Florida International University, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In 2011, Acosta issued a letter decrying high-pressure tactics by Epstein’s defense, some of which Epstein’s legal team denied.
The decadelong legal imbroglio has already unleashed a series of sensational allegations against some of Epstein’s prominent friends and brought unwanted attention to others. Almost exactly a year ago, POLITICO reported that a woman seeking to join the ongoing suit claimed in a court filing that while she was underage Epstein arranged for her to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew and Dershowitz. Both men denied the allegations.
Dershowitz did a series of media interviews in which he angrily disputed the claims, saying he’d done nothing untoward and had been only a social acquaintance and later an attorney for Epstein. Dershowitz also sought to disbar Edwards and Cassell for leveling spurious allegations. They responded by suing the famed attorney and emeritus Harvard Law professor for libel. He fought back with a countersuit. That litigation is still moving forward in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, court.
Epstein, who has remained publicly silent through the furor, also counted among his social acquaintances former President Bill Clinton and businessman Donald Trump.
As the Dershowitz and Prince Andrew allegations were being publicly aired earlier this year, Republicans seized on Clinton’s connections to Epstein, hoping to make trouble for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential bid. Press reports have noted that Bill Clinton, as well as actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, used Epstein’s private 727 to travel to Africa in 2002 for a Clinton Foundation tour of AIDS-fighting and development work. Flight logs filed in connection with another lawsuit show at least 10 journeys by Clinton on Epstein’s planes.
“I’d like to know what he was doing with Jeffrey Epstein, how many trips did he take, where was he going, what did he do when he was with this guy?” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus told Bloomberg in March. Virginia Roberts, the woman who leveled the allegations against Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, specifically denied any sexual contact with Clinton, although she claimed to have seen him on a private island Epstein owns in the Caribbean.
The Clinton camp declined to comment on the reports, but Dershowitz said the claim of Bill Clinton visits to Epstein’s Little Saint James Island was false. Nevertheless, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in June demanding all Secret Service records pertaining to the costs of any such visits by Clinton. The Secret Service rebuffed the suit, telling the group in August that no such records exist.
Republicans have been quieter about the Epstein saga since Trump emerged as a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine back in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
A Trump associate told POLITICO in July that Trump wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing and that he and Epstein were not particularly close. “He was a member of one of Trump’s clubs where he would visit with women and business associates, but there was no formal relationship,” the source close to Trump said.
A BuzzFeed report last month pointed to a deposition in which Epstein’s brother said Epstein and Trump were “friends” who traveled together on Epstein’s plane at least once and to another deposition in which an Epstein aide said Trump ate dinner at Epstein’s Palm Beach home.
A lawyer for Trump responded to the report by threatening legal action against the media outlet. “Mr. Trump has NEVER been accused of having any involvement or even having any knowledge of any of Mr. Epstein’s conduct by anyone,” attorney Alan Garten said.
In an order issued this week, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Marra scheduled legal filings through March on the government’s motion to end the suit. However, the judge said if the issues can’t be resolved on the written record, he plans an “evidentiary hearing,” which could play out at the height of the presidential race.
UPDATE (Sunday, 1:07 p.m.): This post has been updated for clarity and to add a link to the filing in the FOIA lawsuit.
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 Reform2015-12-29 21:07:262015-12-29 21:07:26Josh Gerstein, Victims in underage sex case want prosecutors to testify, Politico
A Pennsylvania appellate court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for Msgr. William J. Lynn, overturning for a second time a landmark verdict that was the first conviction nationwide of a Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
A three-judge Superior Court panel found that Lynn’s 2012 conviction had been tainted by prosecutors’ presentation of nearly two dozen examples of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s failure to handle pedophilia within its ranks. Lynn, however, was only charged in connection with his supervision of two priests.
Such evidence, said Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the majority, was “unfairly prejudicial” and effectively turned Lynn into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church. Some of those crimes predated by decades Lynn’s tenure as the archdiocesan official in charge of handling sex-abuse complaints.
The court’s decision again threw into doubt what District Attorney Seth Williams has touted as a historic prosecution, and raised questions about the 64-year-old cleric’s future, two years into his three- to six-year sentence on child endangerment charges.
His lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said he intends once again to seek Lynn’s release from prison.
“In our view, the evidence about other priests had nothing whatsoever to do with Msgr. Lynn and the allegations against him,” Bergstrom said. “I’m pleased with the court’s recognition of that.”
Philadelphia prosecutors, who have 14 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling, said they were reviewing the decision.
Williams “is committed to protecting all the citizens of Philadelphia against crimes of violence such as those committed by Msgr. Lynn,” his spokesman said in a statement.
The ruling was met with silence from the archdiocese, which has paid for Lynn’s legal defense because the charges stemmed from his job. But advocates for child sex-abuse victims bemoaned the back-and-forth appellate rulings that have marked the years since the trial.
Superior Court previously tossed Lynn’s conviction in 2013, finding that he had been improperly charged under a law that did not apply at the time of his alleged crimes. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reinstated the guilty verdict this year.
Tuesday’s ruling again “rubs salt into already deep and still fresh wounds of Philadelphia Catholics and victims,” said David Clohessy, director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
“We hope he’s found guilty again,” he said. “We hope he serves every day of his sentence.”
Marci A. Hamilton, a Philadelphia-area lawyer who has sued the Catholic Church on behalf of clergy sex-abuse victims, agreed.
“I honestly do not know how much less could be done for the victims in Pennsylvania,” she said. “I hope the district attorney will appeal.”
In his opinion Tuesday, Bender affirmed an argument Lynn’s lawyers have been making for four years – that Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina allowed the jury to be unfairly prejudiced by admitting into court decades worth of child-abuse complaints involving Philadelphia-area priests.
Many of those documents, some dating back to the 1940s, had been locked away in a safe in church offices known as the “secret archive.”
As the secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating sex-abuse complaints made against priests and recommending punishment to the archbishop. But several of the priests whose fates were outlined at his trial had left active ministry before Lynn took on that role.
“It is clear from the record that the commonwealth introduced these files to put on trial the entire Archdiocese of Philadelphia, hoping to convict [Lynn] by proxy for the sins of the entire church,” the lawyers wrote in a brief.
Prosecutors said such evidence was necessary to establish that Lynn’s decisions followed a practice or pattern among church leaders to put the archdiocese’s interests above those of victims.
Superior Court Judge Christine L. Donohue agreed.
“The record supports a finding that both Lynn and his predecessors handled prior allegations of sexual abuse against other priests with the motive and intent of shielding the church from scandal,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion.
Lynn was convicted after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations of allowing the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a rectory of St. Jerome Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in prison. He is currently at the state prison in Laurel Highlands, Somerset County.
It was not clear late Tuesday whether Lynn, who has been held since July in a state prison in Waymart, northeast of Scranton, was aware of his latest court victory. Bergstrom said he had not yet had a chance to speak to his client.
“The state correctional people are not going to want to keep him,” Bergstrom said. “We have to do something about that very quickly.”
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20151223_New_trial_ordered_for_Msgr__Lynn__chief_deft__in_Phila_clergy_abuse_case.html#OstvIEqB0TPcouuo.99
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 Reform2015-12-24 05:44:322015-12-24 05:44:32Jeremy Roebuck, New trial ordered for Msgr. Lynn, chief defendant in Phila. clergy abuse case, Philly.com
Former Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes has lost his appeal against his conviction for sexual offences against four girls in the 1980s.
Key Points:
Robert Hughes loses appeal against sex offence conviction
Hughes will continue to serve term of at least six years in prison
Hughes believed trial was not fair due to posts on social media
Allegations of ill-treatment in prison to be referred to minister
Hughes tried to appeal his conviction for seven counts of indecent assault, two counts of sexual assault and one count of assault with an act of indecency.
The decision means Hughes will continue to serve his term of at least six years in prison.
The victims were aged between seven and 15 years old at the time of the offences, which were committed between 1985 and 1990.
He appealed his convictions in part because he believed he did not receive a fair trial due to “poisonous vilification” by people on social media.
His lawyer also argued that the conduct of the crown prosecutor, and the refusal of the trial judge to discharge the jury as a result, had led to a miscarriage of justice.
In their summary, Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and Justices Margaret Beazley and Paul Hidden said comments on social media should not impact a criminal trial.
“Changes to Australian society wrought by the digital revolution (including the rise of the internet and various forms of social media), and the consequent explosion in publicity about notable criminal trials should not diminish the commitment of the criminal justice system to trial by jury,” their summary read.
They also found that the trial judge acted within reason and found no error in the way the criminal trial was conducted.
While the Hughes’ appeal was dismissed, the court asked that allegations the 65-year-old had been ill-treated in prison be referred to the Minister and Commissioner for Corrective Services.
Outside court, lawyer Greg Walsh, said he welcomed the recommendation to review the treatment of his client while he is in custody.
“Any prisoner kept in conditions like Mr Hughes has been is a matter of real concern,” he said.
“He was physically assaulted on a number of occasions and he should never have been treated that way.
“It’s a place of punishment, prison, but it’s not a place where people should be dealt with in the way that he was — in such an inhumane way.”
Mr Walsh said Hughes would now consider whether there were grounds to appeal to the High Court of Australia.
One of Hughes’s victims was seven when she was indecently assaulted. Hughes put her hand on his genitals.
Another child was nine when Hughes told her to swim between his legs at Manly Beach. His swimmers were pulled down.
During the trial the court heard of sleepovers at Hughes’s home, where the actor would walk naked into the room where the girls were sleeping and expose himself to them.
Hughes denied this, saying he slept naked and often used the bathroom at night but would never walk into the room where the girls were staying.
The trial lasted almost six weeks.
During Hughes’s sentencing hearing, harrowing victim impact statements were delivered from women still suffering from the abuse they endured as girls.
One woman, now 37, said she would never have children because of Hughes, and had come to hate the word “dad”.
Another told the court that she wished Hughes “nothing but misery”.
Full article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-21/hey-dad-star-robert-hughes-loses-appeal/7044746
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 Reform2015-12-22 03:55:412015-12-22 03:55:41Jessica Kid, Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes loses appeal against sexual offence conviction, ABC News
“Information about the allegations was passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple United Nations offices, with no one willing to take responsibility to address the serious human rights violations”.
Four French soldiers are being questioned in an investigation into alleged child sexual abuse in vehicle.
Ban Ki-moon’s statement comes in response to the publication of the panel’s review on Thursday. It was the first time in UN’s 70-year history that finance ministers huddled in the Security Council, an event UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called “historic” in his remarks.
In the spring of 2014, allegations came to light that worldwide troops serving as peacekeepers in auto had sexually abused a number of young children in exchange for food or money. Given the gravity of these findings, Ban said he would act quickly to determine what action might be necessary.
Ban’s special envoy for children in conflict, Leila Zerrougi, was harshly criticized in the report, which said she “took no steps” to follow up on the allegations with UNICEF and France until they were reported in the media. He said he accepted the panel’s broad findings.
British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said on Twitter that the “UN has failed to protect most vulnerable – this is unacceptable”.
United Nations officials are quick to note that the organization has a policy of “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse and exploitation by staff or peacekeepers, but continued allegations in the C.A.R. mission over the past year expose the flaws in implementing this policy.
However, the review panel said actions taken by High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein and Peacekeeping Chief Hervé Ladsous after they learned of the allegations did not constitute abuse of their authority. Neither of them was available for comment, and it was not immediately clear where they were. This in no way diminishes the responsibility of the United Nations to speak out when other troops commit violations.
UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund, provided inadequate trauma support to the alleged child victims after the allegations surfaced, offering only a two-hour counselling session by a local organisation, it said. The panel found that Kompass “did not act outside of his authority”.
The panel report criticised the United Nations for investigating Kompass over the leak rather than focusing on the abuse charges themselves.
While the panel concluded there was no abuse of office by those senior officials, it said the head of the internal oversight office who has since retired, Carman Lapointe, “failed to meet her duty” to carefully review the facts before launching an investigation.
The allegations of abuse were brought forward by 10 children and allegedly took place in a centre for displaced people near Bangui airport between December 2013 and June 2014. It started withdrawing some of its 2000 troops this year, handing over to United Nations peacekeepers.
Full article with links: http://waltonian.com/2015/12/gross-institutional-failure-by-un-on-child-sex-abuse-case/
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A New York police officer was arrested in Brooklyn this week and charged with sexually abusing the daughter of a family friend, the authorities said.
The officer, Jacob Sabbagh, 33, was suspended without pay and stripped of his gun and badge after surrendering on Wednesday to officers from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, the authorities said.
He is the third city police officer this year to face charges of victimizing a teenager.
In August, Joel Doseau, a sergeant, was arrested in Brooklyn on charges that he had sex with an underage girl he had met online in 2007, the authorities said.
Fifteen days later, Sergeant Doseau killed himself at his home in Canarsie, Brooklyn, the police said.
In March, Vladimir Sosa, 38, an officer who joined the force in 2007, was arrested in the Bronx on third-degree rape and other charges in connection with at least three encounters with a girl last year, while she was 16, according to a criminal complaint.
Terry Raskyn, a spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office, said the case against Officer Sosa, which was eventually dismissed, had been sealed. The Police Department said on Thursday that Officer Sosa had been suspended from duty since he was charged in March.
In the most recent case, Officer Sabbagh was charged with second-degree sexual abuse, second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child and endangering the welfare of a child, according to court papers.
He was arraigned on Wednesday and released on his own recognizance, officials said.
Officer Sabbagh, who joined the force in 2009, had been on modified assignment for more than a year and assigned to work in the department’s building maintenance section, officials said.
Investigators believe that the officer was a family friend of the girl’s who would sleep at her home approximately twice a month, according to a law enforcement official who spoke anonymously to discuss a pending case.
The official said the alleged encounters with the girl occurred from 2005, when she was 10, to 2008, when she was 13.
When the girl turned 16 and was living overseas, she complained to her mother, the official said, and last year she complained directly to the authorities.
Stephen C. Worth, a lawyer for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, declined to comment on the matter.
A version of this article appears in print on December 18, 2015, on page A34 of the New York edition with the headline: Police Officer Is Charged With Sexual Abuse of Girl.
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/nyregion/police-officer-accused-of-sexually-abusing-a-family-friends-daughter.html
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 Reform2015-12-22 03:49:512015-12-22 03:49:51Al Baker, Police Officer Accused of Sexually Abusing a Family Friend’s Daughter, NY Times
Jeremy Roebuck, D.A. asks appeals court to reconsider Lynn case, Philly.com
/in Pennsylvania /by SOL ReformPhiladelphia prosecutors urged a state appellate court on Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn what had been the first conviction nationwide of a Roman Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
District Attorney Seth Williams asked Superior Court for a chance to reargue the case against Msgr. William J. Lynn in front of all nine judges.
His request came a week after a three-judge panel ordered a new trial for Lynn, continuing an up-and-down legal fight for the 64-year-old prelate three years after his conviction on child endangerment charges.
“We will continue to fight to keep Msgr. Lynn in state custody, where he belongs,” Williams told reporters. “We have to do all that we can – especially when an institution uses institutional power to protect pedophiles.”
Lynn’s lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said the move by Williams’ office was not entirely unexpected.
“This is like a never-ending saga,” he said. “Hopefully, the Superior Court’s opinion will stand.”
In tossing Lynn’s conviction last week, Superior Court took issue with evidence prosecutors introduced at Lynn’s 2012 trial in an attempt to prove that the Philadelphia Archdiocese historically mishandled child-abuse complaints involving area priests.
Some files shown to jurors from the archdiocese’s “secret archive” dated back to the 1940s, preceding by decades Lynn’s tenure as the official in charge of handling sex abuse cases.
Lynn had been charged with mishandling decisions involving one specific priest – the Rev. Edward J. Avery – who had a history of sexually abusing children. Despite previous allegations against Avery, Lynn allowed him to live in a Northeast rectory, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty to the 1999 attack and is serving five years in prison.
Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina, who presided over Lynn’s original trial, ruled that the historic evidence of the church’s treatment of accused priests offered insight into Lynn’s decision-making once he took over as the archdiocese’s secretary for clergy in 1992. It also shed light on the archdiocese’s practice of protecting its own institutional interests by covering up abuse complaints, Sarmina found.
However, Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the Superior Court majority last week, described such evidence as “unfairly prejudicial,” and sided with Lynn’s argument that it effectively turned him into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church.
Williams defended Sarmina’s decision at a news conference Monday in which he sought to couch the case in a larger discussion of child sex abuse involving perpetrators who are known to their victims.
“The evidence presented at trial showed the jury and the world that [Lynn’s] handling of Father Avery was completely typical of his handling of other similar predator priests and established that he knew just how dangerous such priests were,” he said.
If pressed, the district attorney added, his office was prepared to try the case against Lynn again in Common Pleas Court.
Lynn remains housed in a state prison in Waymart, northeast of Scranton, having completed more than two years of his three- to six-year term.
The same appellate court panel tossed Lynn’s conviction once before, finding in 2013 that he had been improperly charged under a law that did not apply at the time of his alleged crimes. That legal victory was short-lived, as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned that decision and reinstated the jury’s guilty verdict this year.
Last week’s Superior Court ruling threw out Lynn’s conviction under a different argument – one of 10 made by his lawyers – but did not address Lynn’s eight remaining claims.
In its court filings Monday, Williams’ office urged Superior Court to settle all 10 of the monsignor’s arguments to prevent “years of unnecessary litigation” as the case moves between the appellate courts.
In the meantime, Bergstrom, Lynn’s lawyer, has petitioned Sarmina to order his client’s release.
A hearing on that request has not yet been scheduled, but Williams said Monday he planned to push back against it.
Full article: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/363649181.html
Josh Gerstein, Victims in underage sex case want prosecutors to testify, Politico
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformTwo women suing the U.S. government over a deal cut with a politically connected billionaire in an underage-sex case last decade are demanding that FBI agents and prosecutors — including the top federal prosecutor for Southern Florida at the time — be required to testify about whether victims were deliberately kept in the dark about provisions of the controversial plea bargain for investor Jeffrey Epstein.
In a motion filed in federal court in West Palm Beach, lawyers for the two women pressing the lawsuit say depositions are needed from former U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, two FBI agents, two former prosecutors and one current prosecutor because written evidence does not indicate what victims were told about the deal that ruled out a federal prosecution of Epstein.
After a hard-fought, behind-the-scenes legal battle involving some of America’s most prominent defense attorneys, including Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr and Roy Black, Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two state charges of soliciting prostitution and soliciting a minor for prostitution. Epstein received an 18-month sentence in county jail and was released after 13 months.
However, soon after the deal was cut in 2008, two women (identified only as Jane Does) filed suit claiming that the decision to forgo federal prosecution violated a federal law — the Crime Victims Rights Act — because they and other teenagers Epstein paid for sex were never adequately consulted about the plea deal or given an opportunity to object to it.
“The victims have now secured various emails and letters between the Government and defense counsel for Epstein. But that discovery does not directly shed light on several critical issues in the case,” victims’ attorneys Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell wrote in the motion seeking testimony from the prosecutors and FBI agents. “There appears to be no clear documentary record as to what the Government is contending that its agents told the victims.”
The women’s lawyers also say the depositions could shed light on a startling defense the government offered at a recent court hearing: that the women don’t qualify legally as victims because they allegedly helped procure other teens for sex with Epstein.
“Apparently the Government believes that because Epstein pressured some of his young victims into performing sexual acts, those victims themselves were complicit in Epstein’s crimes and therefore are barred from seeking relief under the CVRA,” Edwards and Cassell wrote. “Given that this argument rests on internal ‘accusations’
not revealed in documentary evidence, the only way for the victims to explore this newly-raised argument is by deposing the prosecutors on this subject.”
The government plans to oppose the depositions, according to the defense. Acosta, now dean of the law school at Florida International University, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. In 2011, Acosta issued a letter decrying high-pressure tactics by Epstein’s defense, some of which Epstein’s legal team denied.
The decadelong legal imbroglio has already unleashed a series of sensational allegations against some of Epstein’s prominent friends and brought unwanted attention to others. Almost exactly a year ago, POLITICO reported that a woman seeking to join the ongoing suit claimed in a court filing that while she was underage Epstein arranged for her to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew and Dershowitz. Both men denied the allegations.
Dershowitz did a series of media interviews in which he angrily disputed the claims, saying he’d done nothing untoward and had been only a social acquaintance and later an attorney for Epstein. Dershowitz also sought to disbar Edwards and Cassell for leveling spurious allegations. They responded by suing the famed attorney and emeritus Harvard Law professor for libel. He fought back with a countersuit. That litigation is still moving forward in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, court.
Epstein, who has remained publicly silent through the furor, also counted among his social acquaintances former President Bill Clinton and businessman Donald Trump.
As the Dershowitz and Prince Andrew allegations were being publicly aired earlier this year, Republicans seized on Clinton’s connections to Epstein, hoping to make trouble for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential bid. Press reports have noted that Bill Clinton, as well as actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, used Epstein’s private 727 to travel to Africa in 2002 for a Clinton Foundation tour of AIDS-fighting and development work. Flight logs filed in connection with another lawsuit show at least 10 journeys by Clinton on Epstein’s planes.
“I’d like to know what he was doing with Jeffrey Epstein, how many trips did he take, where was he going, what did he do when he was with this guy?” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus told Bloomberg in March. Virginia Roberts, the woman who leveled the allegations against Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, specifically denied any sexual contact with Clinton, although she claimed to have seen him on a private island Epstein owns in the Caribbean.
The Clinton camp declined to comment on the reports, but Dershowitz said the claim of Bill Clinton visits to Epstein’s Little Saint James Island was false. Nevertheless, the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in June demanding all Secret Service records pertaining to the costs of any such visits by Clinton. The Secret Service rebuffed the suit, telling the group in August that no such records exist.
Republicans have been quieter about the Epstein saga since Trump emerged as a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine back in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
A Trump associate told POLITICO in July that Trump wasn’t aware of any wrongdoing and that he and Epstein were not particularly close. “He was a member of one of Trump’s clubs where he would visit with women and business associates, but there was no formal relationship,” the source close to Trump said.
A BuzzFeed report last month pointed to a deposition in which Epstein’s brother said Epstein and Trump were “friends” who traveled together on Epstein’s plane at least once and to another deposition in which an Epstein aide said Trump ate dinner at Epstein’s Palm Beach home.
A lawyer for Trump responded to the report by threatening legal action against the media outlet. “Mr. Trump has NEVER been accused of having any involvement or even having any knowledge of any of Mr. Epstein’s conduct by anyone,” attorney Alan Garten said.
In an order issued this week, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Marra scheduled legal filings through March on the government’s motion to end the suit. However, the judge said if the issues can’t be resolved on the written record, he plans an “evidentiary hearing,” which could play out at the height of the presidential race.
UPDATE (Sunday, 1:07 p.m.): This post has been updated for clarity and to add a link to the filing in the FOIA lawsuit.
Victims in underage sex case want prosecutors to testify – POLITICO
Jeremy Roebuck, New trial ordered for Msgr. Lynn, chief defendant in Phila. clergy abuse case, Philly.com
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformA Pennsylvania appellate court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for Msgr. William J. Lynn, overturning for a second time a landmark verdict that was the first conviction nationwide of a Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
A three-judge Superior Court panel found that Lynn’s 2012 conviction had been tainted by prosecutors’ presentation of nearly two dozen examples of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s failure to handle pedophilia within its ranks. Lynn, however, was only charged in connection with his supervision of two priests.
Such evidence, said Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the majority, was “unfairly prejudicial” and effectively turned Lynn into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church. Some of those crimes predated by decades Lynn’s tenure as the archdiocesan official in charge of handling sex-abuse complaints.
The court’s decision again threw into doubt what District Attorney Seth Williams has touted as a historic prosecution, and raised questions about the 64-year-old cleric’s future, two years into his three- to six-year sentence on child endangerment charges.
His lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said he intends once again to seek Lynn’s release from prison.
“In our view, the evidence about other priests had nothing whatsoever to do with Msgr. Lynn and the allegations against him,” Bergstrom said. “I’m pleased with the court’s recognition of that.”
Philadelphia prosecutors, who have 14 days to decide whether to appeal the ruling, said they were reviewing the decision.
Williams “is committed to protecting all the citizens of Philadelphia against crimes of violence such as those committed by Msgr. Lynn,” his spokesman said in a statement.
The ruling was met with silence from the archdiocese, which has paid for Lynn’s legal defense because the charges stemmed from his job. But advocates for child sex-abuse victims bemoaned the back-and-forth appellate rulings that have marked the years since the trial.
Superior Court previously tossed Lynn’s conviction in 2013, finding that he had been improperly charged under a law that did not apply at the time of his alleged crimes. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reinstated the guilty verdict this year.
Tuesday’s ruling again “rubs salt into already deep and still fresh wounds of Philadelphia Catholics and victims,” said David Clohessy, director of the St. Louis-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
“We hope he’s found guilty again,” he said. “We hope he serves every day of his sentence.”
Marci A. Hamilton, a Philadelphia-area lawyer who has sued the Catholic Church on behalf of clergy sex-abuse victims, agreed.
“I honestly do not know how much less could be done for the victims in Pennsylvania,” she said. “I hope the district attorney will appeal.”
In his opinion Tuesday, Bender affirmed an argument Lynn’s lawyers have been making for four years – that Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina allowed the jury to be unfairly prejudiced by admitting into court decades worth of child-abuse complaints involving Philadelphia-area priests.
Many of those documents, some dating back to the 1940s, had been locked away in a safe in church offices known as the “secret archive.”
As the secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating sex-abuse complaints made against priests and recommending punishment to the archbishop. But several of the priests whose fates were outlined at his trial had left active ministry before Lynn took on that role.
“It is clear from the record that the commonwealth introduced these files to put on trial the entire Archdiocese of Philadelphia, hoping to convict [Lynn] by proxy for the sins of the entire church,” the lawyers wrote in a brief.
Prosecutors said such evidence was necessary to establish that Lynn’s decisions followed a practice or pattern among church leaders to put the archdiocese’s interests above those of victims.
Superior Court Judge Christine L. Donohue agreed.
“The record supports a finding that both Lynn and his predecessors handled prior allegations of sexual abuse against other priests with the motive and intent of shielding the church from scandal,” she wrote in a dissenting opinion.
Lynn was convicted after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations of allowing the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a rectory of St. Jerome Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in prison. He is currently at the state prison in Laurel Highlands, Somerset County.
It was not clear late Tuesday whether Lynn, who has been held since July in a state prison in Waymart, northeast of Scranton, was aware of his latest court victory. Bergstrom said he had not yet had a chance to speak to his client.
“The state correctional people are not going to want to keep him,” Bergstrom said. “We have to do something about that very quickly.”
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20151223_New_trial_ordered_for_Msgr__Lynn__chief_deft__in_Phila_clergy_abuse_case.html#OstvIEqB0TPcouuo.99
Jessica Kid, Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes loses appeal against sexual offence conviction, ABC News
/in Uncategorized /by SOL ReformFormer Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes has lost his appeal against his conviction for sexual offences against four girls in the 1980s.
Key Points:
Robert Hughes loses appeal against sex offence conviction
Hughes will continue to serve term of at least six years in prison
Hughes believed trial was not fair due to posts on social media
Allegations of ill-treatment in prison to be referred to minister
Hughes tried to appeal his conviction for seven counts of indecent assault, two counts of sexual assault and one count of assault with an act of indecency.
The decision means Hughes will continue to serve his term of at least six years in prison.
The victims were aged between seven and 15 years old at the time of the offences, which were committed between 1985 and 1990.
He appealed his convictions in part because he believed he did not receive a fair trial due to “poisonous vilification” by people on social media.
His lawyer also argued that the conduct of the crown prosecutor, and the refusal of the trial judge to discharge the jury as a result, had led to a miscarriage of justice.
In their summary, Chief Justice Tom Bathurst and Justices Margaret Beazley and Paul Hidden said comments on social media should not impact a criminal trial.
“Changes to Australian society wrought by the digital revolution (including the rise of the internet and various forms of social media), and the consequent explosion in publicity about notable criminal trials should not diminish the commitment of the criminal justice system to trial by jury,” their summary read.
They also found that the trial judge acted within reason and found no error in the way the criminal trial was conducted.
While the Hughes’ appeal was dismissed, the court asked that allegations the 65-year-old had been ill-treated in prison be referred to the Minister and Commissioner for Corrective Services.
Outside court, lawyer Greg Walsh, said he welcomed the recommendation to review the treatment of his client while he is in custody.
“Any prisoner kept in conditions like Mr Hughes has been is a matter of real concern,” he said.
“He was physically assaulted on a number of occasions and he should never have been treated that way.
“It’s a place of punishment, prison, but it’s not a place where people should be dealt with in the way that he was — in such an inhumane way.”
Mr Walsh said Hughes would now consider whether there were grounds to appeal to the High Court of Australia.
One of Hughes’s victims was seven when she was indecently assaulted. Hughes put her hand on his genitals.
Another child was nine when Hughes told her to swim between his legs at Manly Beach. His swimmers were pulled down.
During the trial the court heard of sleepovers at Hughes’s home, where the actor would walk naked into the room where the girls were sleeping and expose himself to them.
Hughes denied this, saying he slept naked and often used the bathroom at night but would never walk into the room where the girls were staying.
The trial lasted almost six weeks.
During Hughes’s sentencing hearing, harrowing victim impact statements were delivered from women still suffering from the abuse they endured as girls.
One woman, now 37, said she would never have children because of Hughes, and had come to hate the word “dad”.
Another told the court that she wished Hughes “nothing but misery”.
Full article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-21/hey-dad-star-robert-hughes-loses-appeal/7044746
Greg Daniels, ‘Gross institutional failure’ by UN on child sex abuse case, Waltonian
/in Uncategorized /by SOL Reform“Information about the allegations was passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple United Nations offices, with no one willing to take responsibility to address the serious human rights violations”.
Four French soldiers are being questioned in an investigation into alleged child sexual abuse in vehicle.
Ban Ki-moon’s statement comes in response to the publication of the panel’s review on Thursday. It was the first time in UN’s 70-year history that finance ministers huddled in the Security Council, an event UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called “historic” in his remarks.
In the spring of 2014, allegations came to light that worldwide troops serving as peacekeepers in auto had sexually abused a number of young children in exchange for food or money. Given the gravity of these findings, Ban said he would act quickly to determine what action might be necessary.
Ban’s special envoy for children in conflict, Leila Zerrougi, was harshly criticized in the report, which said she “took no steps” to follow up on the allegations with UNICEF and France until they were reported in the media. He said he accepted the panel’s broad findings.
British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said on Twitter that the “UN has failed to protect most vulnerable – this is unacceptable”.
United Nations officials are quick to note that the organization has a policy of “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse and exploitation by staff or peacekeepers, but continued allegations in the C.A.R. mission over the past year expose the flaws in implementing this policy.
However, the review panel said actions taken by High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein and Peacekeeping Chief Hervé Ladsous after they learned of the allegations did not constitute abuse of their authority. Neither of them was available for comment, and it was not immediately clear where they were. This in no way diminishes the responsibility of the United Nations to speak out when other troops commit violations.
UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund, provided inadequate trauma support to the alleged child victims after the allegations surfaced, offering only a two-hour counselling session by a local organisation, it said. The panel found that Kompass “did not act outside of his authority”.
The panel report criticised the United Nations for investigating Kompass over the leak rather than focusing on the abuse charges themselves.
While the panel concluded there was no abuse of office by those senior officials, it said the head of the internal oversight office who has since retired, Carman Lapointe, “failed to meet her duty” to carefully review the facts before launching an investigation.
The allegations of abuse were brought forward by 10 children and allegedly took place in a centre for displaced people near Bangui airport between December 2013 and June 2014. It started withdrawing some of its 2000 troops this year, handing over to United Nations peacekeepers.
Full article with links: http://waltonian.com/2015/12/gross-institutional-failure-by-un-on-child-sex-abuse-case/
Al Baker, Police Officer Accused of Sexually Abusing a Family Friend’s Daughter, NY Times
/in New York /by SOL ReformA New York police officer was arrested in Brooklyn this week and charged with sexually abusing the daughter of a family friend, the authorities said.
The officer, Jacob Sabbagh, 33, was suspended without pay and stripped of his gun and badge after surrendering on Wednesday to officers from the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, the authorities said.
He is the third city police officer this year to face charges of victimizing a teenager.
In August, Joel Doseau, a sergeant, was arrested in Brooklyn on charges that he had sex with an underage girl he had met online in 2007, the authorities said.
Fifteen days later, Sergeant Doseau killed himself at his home in Canarsie, Brooklyn, the police said.
In March, Vladimir Sosa, 38, an officer who joined the force in 2007, was arrested in the Bronx on third-degree rape and other charges in connection with at least three encounters with a girl last year, while she was 16, according to a criminal complaint.
Terry Raskyn, a spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office, said the case against Officer Sosa, which was eventually dismissed, had been sealed. The Police Department said on Thursday that Officer Sosa had been suspended from duty since he was charged in March.
In the most recent case, Officer Sabbagh was charged with second-degree sexual abuse, second-degree course of sexual conduct against a child and endangering the welfare of a child, according to court papers.
He was arraigned on Wednesday and released on his own recognizance, officials said.
Officer Sabbagh, who joined the force in 2009, had been on modified assignment for more than a year and assigned to work in the department’s building maintenance section, officials said.
Investigators believe that the officer was a family friend of the girl’s who would sleep at her home approximately twice a month, according to a law enforcement official who spoke anonymously to discuss a pending case.
The official said the alleged encounters with the girl occurred from 2005, when she was 10, to 2008, when she was 13.
When the girl turned 16 and was living overseas, she complained to her mother, the official said, and last year she complained directly to the authorities.
Stephen C. Worth, a lawyer for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, declined to comment on the matter.
A version of this article appears in print on December 18, 2015, on page A34 of the New York edition with the headline: Police Officer Is Charged With Sexual Abuse of Girl.
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/nyregion/police-officer-accused-of-sexually-abusing-a-family-friends-daughter.html