The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has welcomed Pope Francis’s announcement of a new Vatican department to deal with bishops accused of covering up or not preventing child sexual abuse by clerics.

But I think what the new regulations coming out from the Vatican means that there’s going to be a more efficient way of holding both myself and other bishops accountable to the Holy Father for our stewardship of our dioceses, especially in the area of the prevention of abuse of minors.

In Chile, the pontiff’s January appointment of Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid as the new bishop of the Diocese of Osorno generated strong national protest because of his ties to the Rev. Fernando Karadima, found guilty by the Vatican in 2011 of sexual abuse of minors and sentenced to a life of “penance and prayer”. They create a mechanism by which the Vatican can examine complaints and adjudicate them with the creation of a special judicial section inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Details must still be worked out, including possible punishments and the statute of limitations to determine whether old cases of negligence by bishops dating back 20 or 30 years can now be heard. There are parents who are so concerned that they don’t allow their children to have computers in their room; the computers must be in a common area of the house. “Priests abuse children and so do bishops – bishops who offend are inevitably enablers, and the commission’s plan must confront that sad fact”. The panel approved the measures, as did Francis, who authorized funding for full-time personnel to staff the new office, the Vatican said.

Bellegarde says a directly apology from the Pope “would be huge” and help bring closure to those who suffered atrocities and abuses at the schools, many of which were run by the Roman Catholic Church. In theory, a bishop could appeal a verdict to the pope, but a Vatican spokesman said Wednesday “there’s no reason to expect he’d overrule the tribunal’s decision”. On the other hand, many people are pleased with the Pope’s new approval of the said tribunal. The Vatican’s charity office began offering haircuts and shaves by professional volunteers, as part of the shower service.

The Vatican’s initiative comes as U.S. prosecutors are seeking to hold the church hierarchy responsible for failing to protect children from harm.

Nearly every report I’ve read has mentioned Bishop Finn, probably because his case is so fresh, but one wonders whether the first name on the docket might end up being Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law, predecessor to Cardinal O’Malley, who resigned in 2002 and in 2004 – after a brief stint as chaplain to the Religious Sisters of Mercy, in Alma, Michigan – was appointed an Archpriest of the Basilica of Mary Major by Pope John Paul II.

St. Louis, MO (KTRS) The Spring General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is underway in St. Louis.

“When allegations against senior clergy are brought to the tribunal, we’ll see whether it’s working”, Saunders said. Since 2001, the congregation has judged priests accused of sexual abuse, but there has been no Vatican office with a similar role to judge bishops. Larry is our main news editor.

http://www.belljarnews.com/pope-creates-tribunal-for-bishops-in-abuse-cases/852726/

He could have filed his sex-abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts anonymously, but Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough wants to use his position as a public official to inspire others to come forward and hold their abusers accountable.

“I think it’s important for me that I use that to be able to help give other people strength to seek out help,” McDonough said Tuesday when he announced his lawsuit. “(Predators) are going to be there, they’re going to be in our communities. It’s about how we watch and the actions we take when we find out; what we do to help prevent this, to contain this, to make it extremely hard for predators to be successful. That’s part of my public role, it’s part of my responsibility to the community. And I take that very seriously.”

McDonough filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court against the Boy Scouts of America (the national organization) and its local chapter, the Northern Star Council.

McDonough said he was abused between 1967 and 1971, when he was 12 to 16 years old, by Leland Opalinski.

Opalinski was the scoutmaster for McDonough’s St. Paul-based Boy Scout Troop 12 and was also an Explorer advisor for Troop 2012.

He was released by the Boy Scouts in August 1971 when he was arrested on charges of sodomy and “indecent liberties” involving a boy, according to a publicly released letter in Opalinski’s file maintained by the Boy Scouts of America.

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Similar files have been created for other Scout leaders or volunteers accused of sexual misconduct with children, and a 2012 court order in an Oregon lawsuit forced the Boy Scouts to publicly release more than 1,000 of them. The files are interchangeably referred to as “perversion files,” “confidential files” and “ineligible volunteer files.”

HIS SCOUTMASTER ARRESTED

Opalinski’s file was one of those disgorged in 2012.

Jim McDonough, chairman of the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, speaks at a news conference Tuesday announcing his civil lawsuit against the Boy
Jim McDonough, chairman of the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners, speaks at a news conference Tuesday announcing his civil lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and the local Northern Star Council, claiming he was sexually abused by a Scout leader years ago. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)
It contains a few letters from Boy Scouts officials requesting information related to his criminal case, as well as a “confidential record sheet” — a commonly used form to initiate a person’s perversion file.

Opalinski pleaded guilty to the charges in 1971 and was sentenced to probation, according to a St. Paul Dispatch story at the time.

The victim in that case was another boy from McDonough’s troop, McDonough said Tuesday. The two boys knew each other.

McDonough said Opalinski reached out to him after his arrest in August 1971, when McDonough was 16. “Right after he got charged, he was pounding on my door unexpectedly. ‘Will you go for a ride with me?’ I was this 12-year-old little kid again.

Memorabila from Jim McDonough’s days as a Boy Scout is displayed at a news conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, where his civil
Memorabila from Jim McDonough’s days as a Boy Scout is displayed at a news conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, where his civil lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America was announced. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)
I got in his car and I went, ‘What in the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this?’ And he starts telling me about he’s been charged and is going to go to prison for the rest of his life. And I thought, ‘You want sympathy from me?’ ”
McDonough recalls worrying about what he would say when the Boy Scouts and police came to his door, now that they knew about Opalinski and what he’d done to another boy in the troop.

“And I was thinking about that and I was trying to figure out how to prepare for that, as a 16-year-old boy that’s already messed up,” McDonough said. “And that knock never came from nobody.”

For many years he said he self-medicated with drugs and alcohol, he said. Eventually, McDonough resigned himself to living with his secret — something he’d told only his wife.

Patrick Noaker, attorney for Jim McDonough (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)
Patrick Noaker, attorney for Jim McDonough (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)
And when his eldest son wanted to join the Boy Scouts, he paused.

But remembering all the good things that came from being a scout, McDonough agreed to let his son join — but with a catch. McDonough would be the scout leader and he would be there for every camping trip and event.

BOY SCOUTS KNEW, MCDONOUGH SAYS

The Child Victims Act, passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2013, changed everything, he said.

“With this legislation I can make changes,” he said, “changes in my well being, changes for others, changes within the BSA.”

The Child Victims Act suspended the statute of limitations for anyone wishing to file lawsuits related to sexual abuse that occurred many years ago.

MINNESOTA BOY SCOUTS SEX ABUSE: A TIMELINE

2011: 2011: Former scoutmaster Peter R. Stibal II, Burnsville, was sentenced to 21 years and one month for sexually abusing four Boy Scouts from 2003 to 2008, and for possession of child pornography.

2012: A review of Boy Scouts of America files released in October 2012 as the result of an Oregon sexual abuse lawsuit identified 23 Minnesota Scout leaders whose actions — sometimes merely alleged — were bad enough to get them blacklisted by the organization. At times, apparently in secret.

The file included Lee Opalinski of St. Paul, who was 30 at the time his 1971 file was created. Opalinski, an “explorer adviser” in Post 2012 of St. Paul’s Indianhead Council, pleaded guilty to a charge of “indecent liberties” involving a 14-year-old boy, according to a 1971 article in the St. Paul Dispatch. The file has no details of the incident.

2013: Richard Hokanson, a convicted child molester living in Faribault, was sued by two former Scouts for alleged abuse in the 1970s in the Rochester area, where he served as a Scout leader for nearly 22 years. The suits alleged he sexually abused more than 21 Scouts from at least 1969 to 1982. Hokanson pleaded guilty in 1982 to molesting three Scouts in a troop sponsored by St. Pius Church.

The three-year window will close in May 2016.
There has been much publicity around cases of clergy sex abuse, and comparatively less attention in Minnesota about abuse cases within the Boy Scouts.

But the publicly released files seem to indicate — and McDonough’s lawsuit asserts — that the Boy Scouts knew about pedophiles in their ranks but chose not to alert scouts and their parents to the potential dangers.

Part of McDonough’s claims against the Boy Scouts is that a systemic failure led to his abuse. It’s still unclear exactly how much Boy Scouts officials knew about Opalinski or when they knew it.

“We hope to get testimony from other adults who were around him at the time to find out what they may have known,” said Peter Janci, one of McDonough’s attorneys and an attorney involved in the historic 2012 Oregon case. “But it’s clear that they knew about thousands of other leaders who were abusing kids … how they groomed kids, that they often spent time alone with them. All of that info (the Boy Scouts organization) could have been used to create policies to protect children. And they kept it a secret. They failed to warn parents and kids about this risk.”

The Boy Scouts of America created a “red flag” system in the 1920s to identify scout leaders who shouldn’t hold positions of authority, which led to the perversion files, McDonough’s suit said. The organization began to purge and destroy files in the 1970s, the suit said. At one point there were more than 20,000 files; about 6,000 survived the purge and fewer than 2,000 have been released publicly.

The Portland law firm Crew Janci provides a full list of the files released on its website: crewjanci.com/resources/boy-scout-perversion-files.

Minneapolis lawyer Patrick Noaker — another of McDonough’s attorneys — provides a list of the 33 publicly released Minnesota files: noakerlaw.com/boy-scouts.

In a statement announcing McDonough’s lawsuit Tuesday, Noaker and McDonough called on the Boy Scouts to fully disclose 47 nonpublic records that are known to exist, but whose details and names have not been released.

According to the statement, McDonough said, “The Boy Scouts have a moral duty to release that information to parents and provide it to law enforcement so appropriate steps can be taken to protect kids in our state. If this lawsuit will help prevent even one child from going through what I had to go through in my youth, it will be a success.”

BOY SCOUTS ORGANIZATION REPONSE

The local and national Boy Scouts organizations sent the same response Tuesday, offering few details on Opalinski. The organization confirmed that Opalinski was released in 1971, when he was arrested and charged, after being involved with the Scouts for about five years.

“Recognizing youth protection requires sustained vigilance, in the more than four decades since these incidents took place we have continued to develop and enhance our efforts to protect youth, regularly consulting with experts from law enforcement, child safety, psychology, and other disciplines to ensure that our efforts consistently evolve along with the ever-changing awareness of the dangers and challenges facing youth,” the Boy Scouts’ statement said. “Today, the BSA seeks to prevent child abuse through a comprehensive program of education on the subject, the chartered organization leader selection process, criminal background and other checks, policies and procedures to serve as barriers to abuse, and the prompt reporting of any allegation or suspicion of abuse to law enforcement.”

During a press conference, an emotional McDonough said he’s had “a lot of anger, a lot of questions” for the Boy Scouts, and he wants to hold the organization accountable for its role in allowing abuse to occur and continue.

“This predator stole four years of my life. I lost another 15 years to self-destructive behavior,” McDonough said. “For years, this was my shame.

“It’s no longer my shame — it’s the Boy Scouts’ shame.”

Sarah Horner contributed to this story. Elizabeth Mohr can be reached at 651-228-5162. Follow her at twitter.com/LizMohr.

BOY SCOUTS SEX ABUSE IN MINNESOTA: A TIMELINE

2011: Former scoutmaster Peter R. Stibal II, Burnsville, was sentenced to 21 years and one month for sexually abusing four Boy Scouts from 2003 to 2008, and for possession of child pornography.

2012: A review of Boy Scouts of America files released in October 2012 as the result of an Oregon sexual abuse lawsuit identified 23 Minnesota Scout leaders whose actions — sometimes merely alleged — were bad enough to get them blacklisted by the organization. At times, apparently in secret.

The file included Lee Opalinski of St. Paul, who was 30 at the time his 1971 file was created. Opalinski, an “explorer adviser” in Post 2012 of St. Paul’s Indianhead Council, pleaded guilty to a charge of “indecent liberties” involving a 14-year-old boy, according to a 1971 article in the St. Paul Dispatch. The file has no details of the incident.

2013: Richard Hokanson, a convicted child molester living in Faribault, was sued by two former Scouts for alleged abuse in the 1970s in the Rochester area, where he served as a Scout leader for nearly 22 years. The suits alleged he sexually abused more than 21 Scouts from at least 1969 to 1982. Hokanson pleaded guilty in 1982 to molesting three Scouts in a troop sponsored by St. Pius Church.

Full article: http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_28364778/ramsey-county-official-sues-boy-scouts-alleged-sex