VATICAN CRIMES IN IRELAND

A Nun Charged with 87 Counts Related to Child Sexual Abuse Can't be Named

2012-01-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

An application by the State to prevent the naming of a criminal has been granted to a Catholic nun. This criminal is facing 87 charges relating to sexual abuse of children.

Prosecution counsel Dara Foynes made the application at Sligo Circuit Court, where the nun appeared yesterday. Judge Tony Hunt granted it. He has also banned publication of the name of the county where case had been moved from for hearing.

Earlier, the court had heard that the case was moved to Sligo at the request of the nun's legal team.

"There are 87 counts in relation to offences of a certain nature," said Ms Foynes.

Judge Hunt remanded the nun on continuing bail to appear at the same court on March 6.

A True Story of Physical and Mental Abuse in the Hands of Catholic Clergy in a Boarding School

2012-01-08T08:47:00.001-08:00

In this video, you will see a highlight of the book IN MY OWN WORDS. It tells the true story of a boy in Ireland on 1964, the twelve-year-old child was summonsed to appear at Dublin's Magistrates Court for an amateurish break-in - just like hundreds and hundreds of boys were forced to do as this was part of a dirty and evil organized crime scheme by the Catholic church and State.

Sentenced to serve three years of dailly hard labor at the Letterfrack Industrial School, young Mickey soon found himself in a malevolent place of correction, subject to the institutionalized abuse of children at the hands of the Christian Brothers - the corrupt religious order of the Catholic Church responsible for the abuse of children in residential schools in Canada, USA, Australia and abroad. During his sentence, Mickey and hundreds of other children were physically and mentally tortured and abused. With Taliban-like zeal, the Christian Brothers methodically administered random, life-threatening beatings merely on a whim; the more injurious were witnessed by fellow brothers, and many witnessed by other terrified children...

Charges of sexual and psychological abuse, molestation, and rape of children by Catholic Church priests have been made in the United States, Ireland, Kenya, The Philippines, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru.

The Catholic Church's Corruption Began from It's First Pope Peter

2012-01-08T08:33:00.000-08:00

Proof that the Catholic Church, The Vatican, has been corrupt since its inception. It's always been about money and keeping the nations ignorant.

For more tracings of Dr. Jose Luis De Jesus, you can visit His official website at http://www.cegenglish.com or all of his tracings in the past 2 years that reveal what religions have hidden from the nations is available at: http://www.vimeo.com/cegenglish

219 Kids Murdered by Protesants in an Ireland Residential Home

2012-01-05T16:39:00.000-08:00

Church & State Crimes at Protestant Bethany Homes for Unwed Mothers - Children Murdered & Unmarked Graves

Victim of Abuse in St. Joseph's Orphanage, Kilkenny Requests Public Enquiry

2011-12-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

Noel Walsh, a victim of sexual abuse in St. Joseph's Orphanage by a catholic clergy, still has the scars from the beatings and the mental anguish of the sex abuse perpetrated on him. His perpetrator was Myles Brady, a sadistic and manipulative, serial, sex offender. It has now emerged, that he committed a string of child sex abuse offenses in England when he obtained a job in the orphanage which was run by The sisters of Charity.

Noel Walsh,
Victim of abuse in St. Joseph Orphanage

Although Noel Walsh made detailed statements about the abuse, backed up by other residents at the time, no criminal action was taken against Brady regarding his case. He wants to know why. He has formerly asked in writing for a public enquiry into; "what went on at St. Joseph's Orphanage" to the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter. Noel has vowed not to rest until the whole truth comes out.

There are still many unanswered questions about how St Joseph’s Orphanage on the city’s Waterford road was managed and about who knew of the depths of the sexual depravity being inflicted there on innocent young children taken from their families for a myriad of different social reasons.

He thinks that if the facts of the sickening saga of abuse of the innocent were made public earlier or dealt with promptly, the abuse could have been stopped earlier than it was and many victims saved from the terror, torture and suffering. Many people saw the little children from St Joseph’s Orphanage going up and coming from school and felt something was astray but felt powerless to help them, such was the dominance of those who ran the orphanage and their contacts within the community.

He has been through the High Court and received a settlement for what happened to him but he wants to know why it was allowed to happen and why to this day, the order has never apologised to him for what happened to him in the orphanage run by it.

Many of those with something to say about the abuse perpetrated by three convicted paedophiles, Teresa Connolly, Myles Brady and the infamous David Murray are still alive and willing to talk.

Noel Walsh is a survivor and he wants justice for those little children who lost their innocence and their childhoods while being protected by the nuns and their employees.

It emerged some time ago that the nuns who ran St Joseph’s knew as far back as 1954 that children in their care were being abused. Department of education inspector Anna McCabe reported in 1954 that nine girls had been abused by a painter employed by the Sisters of Charity. At the time it was argued by a priest that a court case would bring the convent into disrepute and that the experience would mark the children for life if they were called to give evidence. Following his advice, Ms McCabe agreed no prosecution should be taken.

What is very upsetting now in this recession is that the State has picked up the tab for the compensation to victims of abuse at St Joseph’s under the controversial deal between the then government and the religious orders.

Just to give a flavour of the level of compensation from St Joseph’s in the public domain paid for by the taxpayer: In a judgment on March 1, 2005, the High Court awarded Raymond Noctor €370,000 compensation, one of the highest such figures in an abuse case, following severe sexual abuse by care worker David Murray at St Joseph’s from 1972. Mr Noctor told the court he was raped two or three times a week and was subjected to severe beatings by Murray. Murray would set his Alsatian on him and once attempted to involve the dog in a sexual act.

Mr Noctor said in a statement after the court hearing that the actions of the State and the Sisters of Charity in trenchantly denying the validity of his claim over many years “heaped insult on top of injury”. The Sisters of Charity said they acknowledged that Mr Noctor was abused by Murray and were sincerely sorry for the hurt and suffering he endured.

In a High Court judgment in March 2005, David Connellan was awarded €300,000 following “vicious and demeaning” physical, sexual, emotional and racial abuse over five years at St Joseph’s by female and male carers. In a High Court decision in June, 2003, Michael Delahunty was awarded €75,000 following his sexual assault by Myles Brady at St Joseph’s in 1976. Mr Delahunty, aged 12 at the time, was not a resident at the orphanage but was visiting a friend there when the assault took place. His friend was sent on an errand by Brady, who locked the room door before the assault took place.

“We need to know how much was paid out and I’m sure people will be shocked to hear it ran into millions alone in Kilkenny,” Noel Walsh said.

A Survivor tells Her Story of her Life in Ireland's Catholic Church run School

2011-12-08T13:32:00.001-08:00

One Girls tragic convent upbringing that was more like Hell than Heaven.

The shocking true story of an innocent Girl abused by the very people who said they would take good care of her, within Irelands Catholic Church run institutions. You only get one opportunity to live your life as a child, but Lily was never given that chance, her childhood was taken from her before it ever begun.

PAPERBACK & E-BOOK NOW AVAILABLE IN AMAZON & SMASHWORDS.

http://thegirlnobodywants.org/

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco Facing Legal Action for Pedophile Cover Up

2011-12-05T21:35:00.001-08:00

A complaint against the President of the CEI, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco , and the bishop of the Diocese of Savona, Vittorio Lupi , has been filed with the Prosecutor of the Republic of Savona by Francesco Zanardi, a spokesman for the Abuse Association who has been fighting against pedophilia committed by catholic priests. In the complaint, Zanardi asks, among other things, to ascertain the criminal punishment of the bishop and Cardinal Bagnasco for not reporting pedophile priests.

Cardinal Bagnasco,
expert in Pedophilia Coverup

Zanardi, a victim of sexual harassment by a priest, completed a pilgrimage journey this past summer where he walked from Savona to the Holy See to request a meeting with the Vatican, but was denied. This prompted him to turn away from seeking further communication with the Pope who seemed largely uninterested in addressing pedophilia, and now seeks to meet with the President of the European Commission Barroso to show irrefutable evidence of why the Vatican should not have the status as a Sovereign State within the territory of Italy. He is also known for his battles against pedophile priests. In fact, he recently concluded a hunger strike against pedophile priests which began Oct, 31, where he was requesting the European Commission to cancel the sovereign state privilege of the Vatican for good.

A copy of the letter sent to the European president may be found here: http://jh.to/hungerstrike.

Open Letter to Brantford Expositor for Article Slandering Kevin Annett & Mohawk Nation

2011-12-02T22:20:00.001-08:00

It is obvious that Rodrigues, although the President of the Canadian Association of Journalist, has failed to remember his code of journalistic ethics; to remain unbiased, present evidence and conduct investigation on the matter at hand. Had he done so, not only would he have exposed the forensic evidence discovered, which speaks for itself, but also the fact that Church and State have been covering up the Canadian Genocide, and that this is not just in Canada, but rather an organized crime scheme implemented worldwide (www.jh.to/organizedcrime)

Article published: Brantford Expositor

(BELOW AN OPEN LETTER TO HUGO RODRIGUES AND THE BRANTFORD EXPOSITOR)

December 16, 2011 Volume 2, Issue#20

Just What Is Being Exposited Here?

Dear Mr. Rodrigues:

I acknowledge that the Brantford Expositor isn't the Washington Post orthe Manchester Guardian, or even Der Spiegel, but just what planet are you andyour editorial staff professing to exposit?

You recently fired off an exposition entitled “Sensationalism at itsgreatest,” rejecting the recent efforts of the Mohawk Elders and clan mothers,together with Kevin Annett and the International Tribunal Into The Crimes ofChurch and State (ITCCS), to conduct a forensic examination into a suspectedmass grave site (one of at least 28 documented to exist across Canada).

In doing so, you extolled the virtues of Chief Bill Monture and the “MohawkTribal Council,” as the ultimate fount of all knowledge, Mohawk-wise, finalauthority and critic of what is going on.

First of all, let's clarify the chain of command – and credibility – here.

You refer to “elected” band council, which has a ring of authority, all right.You must know, living in

Brantford, that “elected” isa white man's word, and whenever it's pinned to chief or a council, it's thetip off that these boys are marching not to Mohawk drums but to the Ottawavariety: they're payroll Indians, and they're answerable not to their peoplebut to John Duncan, the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Stephen Harper andthe federal government. So much for your expert witnesses.

Your next observation is that “Members of the Mohawk Nation” invitedKevin Annett to the site “and are
behind claims that the remains found belong to former residents at the school.”

Before dissing all of that, you refer to Kevin Annett as a formerAnglican Priest. Wow. Even at his worst, when he strove unsuccessfully tosquare his Christian upbringing and his Master of Divinity degree with thecriminal shenanigans of the United Church of Canada (Indian land sales toMacMillan Bloedel, the incarceration, torture, sodomy, rape and murder of 50%of their students, rather than graduating them cum laude), hewould have been insulted by being described as a minion of that neutered,pseudo-Catholic religion that owes its existence to a fat, horny 17^th CenturyEnglish monarch who wanted multiple annulments that pious Rome would not grant.

Anyway, you're right in your use of the word “former.” The UCC threw himout in 1995 because he insisted on the truth, and he has the lumps (17 yearsworth) to prove it. Loss of his livelihood, harassment, including physicalassault, and treated like a pariah in his own country by the establishment, thegovernment, the RCMP and the media – much bigger, better and more powerful thanthe Brantford Expositor, so you're in good company.

By your definition, Kevin is “an activist.” You should have called him an“occupier.” That, with Wall Street implications, would have completed hiscastigation.

Now let's deal with the matter of “reputable archaeological processes,”as defined by those two experts, Bill Monture and Hugo Rodrigues. By nowyou may have discerned that Kevin is my son, so you can immediately discounteverything I say as nepotism of the worst kind. However, in my lurid past Ionce served as President of the Manitoba Archaeological Society. On manyoccasions, while still a teen-age boy, Kevin participated in professional digscarried out by that Society. There is no one in this whole altercation better ablethan Kevin to understand the importance of the professional integrity of aforensic archaeological examination, and the simple fact that once excavated, asite is virtually destroyed. (This, in fact, has prompted the government andthe churches and the RCMP on more than one occasion to do just that. If I'mwrong, I invite you - and them - to sue me.)

The Mohawk Elders, supported by the clan mothers, with the cooperation ofthe ITCCS, conducted GPR (ground penetrating radar) operations with the use ofmachines that approximate the technology used in the extractive industries,known as aerial magnetometer surveys. On the basis of those findings, theyexcavated. (It's significant to point out that for some time, at taxpayerexpense, Bill Monture and his “elected” payroll Indians have been in possessionof such expensive equipment and have done squat. Nada. Zip. I wonder why?)

Thefindings of the Elders, i.e. specimens of bones, clothing, buttons, shoes andresidues of coal (as in “furnace,” the normal repository of dead children,according to generations of witnesses documented over 20 years, the subject notonly of three books, an award-winning film and Government reports dated since

1907). The bone fragments have recently been authenticated andconfirmed by a professional archaeologist.

Hugo, what really cracked me up was your closing attribution to BillMonture of the final summation: “You can't just dig a hole and say you've foundsome stuff," Montour said in a phone interview. No kidding. Then:"There are rules in Ontario for archeological digs... that's how it shouldhave been done. If they found bones or fragments, then maybe the coroner shouldhave been contacted."

The coroner. Of course. Government employee. Just like Bill Monture, thetribal council, the RCMP and all the ships at sea. The government will get itright, like they have for 150 years. The Mohawk elders know better. This issovereign land, and they've served notice that the payroll Indians, thegovernment, the Crown and the Vatican are to stay out of this. This is one casewhere the foxes will not be trusted to guard the henhouse.

But that isn't the item, Hugo. Note what Bill Monture said: "Justdigging a hole is a grave disrespect for those human remains..."

Three hundred other nations in Turtle Island who have attended 500 formerrez schools, take note. In 141 of those cases, according to the Canadiangovernment's own records, 50% of all the 150,000 kids who were incarceratednever graduated cum laude, or returned home, or were ever seenagain. Gee, I wonder where they went?

Well, given all that lovely Catholic, Anglican and United Christianteaching, perhaps they just rose bodily into Canadian Heaven. Surely the Popecould have arranged that, if not the Anglican Primate or Mardi Tindall, the UCCModerator.

Otherwise, why don't we stop nit-picking about who's authentic, the Mohawkpeople or John Duncan, who has admitted he can't stomach salmon hash or frybread?

Monture is admitting what the Mohawk elders have proven. There are humanremains, requiring only to measure up to Bill Monture's exacting standards.

Do you get it, Hugo?

Habeas corpus and all that,

William Annett

To learn about the Canadian Genocide, visit: www.HiddenNoLonger.com.

Kevin Annett at Occupy Toronto Announces Find of Children's Remains

2011-12-01T20:13:00.001-08:00

Vatican Crimes Exposed Organization was honored to be present at Occupy Toronto to document the special announcement made by Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS), where he demonstrated for the first time, children's bones discovered at Canada's oldest Church-run Indian residential school - Mohawk Institute in Brantford.

The state worked hand in hand with the churches - anglican, catholic, presbyterian, mennonite, and more - to cover up these crimes against humanity where 150,000 children were stolen from their families and placed in religious institutes where they were tortured, abused and even murdered. The Canadian government and the churches have tried to cover up these murders by setting up a so-called Truth and Reconciliation Commission to make people believe the natives are now healing. How can they be healing if the criminals have not been named and much less incarcerated - they are still in power!

This week, human remains were found, proving that children were in fact murdered at these institutions and with this forensic evidence, these can no longer be denied.

Child Trafficking Scheme by Priests and Nuns Exposed on Telegracia TV: Evidencias

2011-12-01T17:54:00.001-08:00

TeleGracia TV continues to broadcast special programs to expose the crimes committed by the corrupt organization known as the Vatican - or Catholic Church - and this week, its EVIDENCIAS show launched a one-hour special dedicated to showing evidence of the child trafficking scheme that the nuns and priests orchestrated in Australia.

During the summer of 2011, the catholic nuns had to issue out a national apology for stealing over 150,000 babies by manipulating women into giving them up for adoption, calling the mothers "sinners" for being pregnant out of wedlock. Many women were even drugged during childbirth if they resisted.

Through this special program, Latin America learned today of this organized crime scheme implemented not only in Australia, but also in Canada, Ireland, USA, Spain and others...

Watch TELEGRACIA TV

DO NOT Leave your Children Alone with a Clergy Member: Priest or Nun!

2011-12-01T12:06:00.001-08:00

The Vatican Crimes Exposed Organization had the honor of interviewing Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State. He is the author of "Unrepentant: Canada's Genocide".

Press Director Axel Cooley had the opportunity to discuss with Mr. Annett the global organized crime implemented by the Catholic Church, an evil organization. Priests and nuns use the Lord's name to gain trust and commit crimes worldwide.

Priest Repellent: Keep Pedophiles Off!

2011-12-01T10:11:00.001-08:00

Children's Bones Uncovered on Church-Run Residential School

2011-11-29T19:19:00.001-08:00

The Protect Your Children Foundation in collaboration with the Vatican Crimes Exposed Organization had the honor of interviewing Kevin Annett, Secretary of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, who has been working with the Mohawk nation to excavate the mass graves where many children were murdered. A fact that has been masked and covered up by the church and state.

Evidence of Mass Murder Uncovered on Indian Residential School Ground

2011-11-29T18:54:00.001-08:00

BREAKING NEWS:

PHOTOS OF CHILDREN'S BONES UNCOVERED ON MOHAWK PEOPLE'S RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL GROUND.

(Click on link below for video.)

News Conference: Bones Uncovered

Children's Bones Found in Canada's Oldest Indian Residential School

2011-11-28T16:53:00.001-08:00

Archaeological digs at the Anglican church's Indian residential school in Brantford, Canada have uncovered children's bones and other evidence of mass murder.
The dig is organized by sovereign Mohawk elders and Kevin Annett of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (http://www.itccs.org) .

Legal Action Against the Vatican for Money Laundering by Duplessis Orphan's Lawyer

2011-11-28T11:06:00.001-08:00

BREAKING NEWS

The Duplessis Orphans numbered about 20,000 children born to unwed mothers in the 1940s and 1950s, during the time of Quebec premier Marcel Duplessis' provincial reign. Orphanages were converted into asylums as a way to make money since Federal funding was higher on a per-child basis for mental hospitals, and thereby successfully implemented a plan to falsely name orphans "mentally ill".

US lawyer Dr. Jonathan Levy of Washington, DC was the only lawyer that stepped up to take action against Vatican Organization and Government on behalf of these victims.

Today, he is taking action once again, against a corrupt system in another case where money laundering is the issue.
See Press Release Below:

November 28, 2011
For Immediate Release

Vatican Bank Holocaust Litigation
Dr. Jonathan Levy, PhD
www.vaticanbankclaims.com
info@brimstoneandcompany.com
+1 202-318-2406

European Commission to Take Legal Action against Vatican in Holocaust Money Laundering Case

Washington DC: When the European Commission referred a long running Holocaust money laundering case against the Vatican Bank to the newly organized Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria, the Vatican agency tasked with anti money laundering, it left open the possibility of legal action by the European Commission against the Vatican.

Now the attorney for over a thousand claimants is asking the European Commission to take action after the Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria deliberately ignored his complaint. Dr. Jonathan Levy is accusing the Vatican of misfeasance and violating European anti money laundering laws. The Vatican is an associate member of the Eurozone (it issues Euros) and part of the European Anti Money Laundering regime through the Vatican Bank and must adhere to certain Directives.

Levy states the Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria is merely continuing a long running fight against an audit of certain accounts at the Vatican Bank belonging to the Franciscan Order and the Diocese of Zagreb. Levy first made his request for an accounting in 1999 and went on to sue the Vatican Bank and Franciscan Order. The case was dismissed in 2010 after a United States appeals court stated it had no jurisdiction.

In correspondence earlier this year from the European Commission, an official indicated the European Commission could institute legal proceedings against the Vatican City State if it violates European anti money laundering Directives. (Benjamin Angel to Jonathan Levy, January 4, 2011).

According to Levy, the Vatican cannot continue to ignore post war money laundering allegations of gold looted from former Yugoslavia: “While we do not dispute the Vatican state answers solely to its God in matters of faith, in matters of finance the laws of Man apply.”

See attachments for Documents cited above.
Click to see Documents
For more information contact:

Dr. Jonathan Levy
Brimstone & Co.
Attorney & Solicitor
1629 K Street NW Suite 300
Washington DC20006 USA
+1-202-318-2406
info@brimstoneandcompany.com
www.vaticanbankclaims.com

Vatican Bank plaintiffs include these organizations:

Jasenovac Research Institute
Republic of Serbian Krajina in Exile
The Independent Council of Gypsies in Serbia
Jasenovac Memorial Center (Belgrade)

Canada: Mohawks Look to Excavate Mass Graves in Religious Residential Schools

2011-11-25T17:15:00.001-08:00

The ITCCS (International Tribunal into Crimes Committed by Church and State) continue their brave work with the Mohawk Nation in Brantford, Ontario - this diligent and courageous nation looks to find forensic evidence of the hundreds of children murdered at Canada's oldest religious residential schools. The government of Canada and the churches it protects, have tried to cover up these truths and put it as a thing of the past by establishing a so-called TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION - just like they did in Ireland - to make the world believe that all is well and that healing has begun.

(JUST LIKE IN USA & IRELAND)
This commission is simply a cover up, to silence the scandal. The criminal priests and nuns have never been held accountable for the abuse, torture and starvation of these children nor the murders of hundreds of innocent native children forcibly institutionalized in these church-run schools. Many of them were used as human experiments and injected with tuberculosis - and this is a fact, that even the government has admitted to, but the churches have been left to walk free.Justice must be served. You can help the Mohawks and the ITCCS by donating to: GPRdonate@gmail.com through paypal.com - or you can contact the ITCCS secretary Kevin Annett for further information at www.itccs.org

US and Vatican Attempting to Censor Internet

2011-11-21T11:23:00.001-08:00

US and Vatican Attempting to Censor InternetRight now, a law is being debated in the US Congress. Under this new law, the US would force Internet providers to block any website on suspicion of violating copyright or trademark legislation, or even failing to sufficiently police their users' activities. The Vatican is heavily backing the new law that would allow them to control information they wouldn't want the world to know.
To sign petition: http://jh.to/uncensored

Italians demand EU to remove the Catholic Church's status of a Sovereign State: Clergy abuse victims invite people to sign online petition

2011-11-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

Victims of sexual abuse committed by Catholic Clergy are now turning to the European Commission, requesting for the Vatican's state privileges be revoked. They have begun a hunger strike in Italy as of October 31, without limits, and invite people around the world to read the petition and support this initiative by signing it online at http://www.jh.to/petition. Below is a copy of the letter written to the European Commission and a copy of the petition.Italy Clergy Abuse Victims Declare Hunger Strike Nov. 2011: Sign Online Petition to revoke Vatican's Sovere...

Occupy Vatican: Tax fraud brings in more Money than drug dealing!

2011-10-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Occupy Vatican: Protests against the Catholic Church's colossal wealth from organized crime

2011-10-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

Join the global movement:

Occupy VaticanSunday, October 30 at 10 a.m. Holy Rosary Cathedral - Dunsmuir and RichardsVancouver, BC (Canada)

Rally at 9:30 a.m. at the Occupy Vancouver front steps, march together to the church

The "roman catholic church" is the world's oldest and biggest corporation that has robbed, raped and murdered its way across our world. It killed more then 50,000 indigenous children in its "Indian residential schools" across Canada, and is now off the hook. It still protects child rapists and is above the law.

It is time to occupy this murderous church!

Squamish elder Kiapilano has banned the catholic church from Squamish Nation territory - Help us enforce this eviction order this Sunday
Bring Drums and banners

Please spread this action!

Sponsored by indigenous members of Occupy Vancouver and
The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

Click on image to watch 2 alarming videos:

www.occupythevatican.com

Read the truth of genocide in Canada and globally at:

www.itccs.org | www.hiddennolonger.com | www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Hinduism Exposed: 6-year old girls used in temple prostitution

2011-10-22T18:55:00.000-07:00

Religion has utilized the name of Christ to commit crimes. Hinduism is no exception.
Take a look at this systematic prostitution ring put in place in so-called "temples" where young girls become the property of the temple and are forced to satisfy the sexual desires of the priest:

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5c5XRKaTBQ

Systematic Abuse: Vatican kills over 50,000 children in Canada using same "residential school" system as in Ireland

2011-10-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

Brantford, Ontario - Mohawk Elders gave the approval to the ITCCS (International Tribunal of Crimes of Church and State) to commence digging and the uncovering of mass graves at Canada's oldest residential school in Canada. Forensic evidence has been found and a radar system identified that much soil has been moved and dumped to cover up the human remains.

The same system used in Ireland - so-called "residential schools" - were implemented by the Anglican, Catholic and United Church were over 50,000 native children were murdered. The government of Canada - like Ireland - helped to cover up these murders committed by the religious.

Residential school mass grave dug up to prove mass murder covered up by Church and State in Canada

2011-10-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was a historic event as the Elders of the Mohawk Nation with the ITCCS began their forensic investigations at Canada's oldest residential school to obtain evidence which confirms the eye witnesses to murder of children at these Church-run schools.

The Canadian government in collaboration with the Catholic, United Church, Protestant, Mennnonite and other religions in Canada have concealed what really happened in these indian residential schools by establishing a national "apology" along with other initiatives such as the "Truth and Reconciliation" Commissions which claim that all parties involved have come to a mutual agreement. Frustrated survivors have grown tired of the media blackout regarding this issue, the lack of assistance from authorities, and as such, have taken matters into their own hands to expose the mass murders that took place in these government-funded religious-run institutions. The natives are finally speaking out exposing how the underlying issue behind these organized crime schemes such as the residential schools, corrupt adoption practices and others have all been about land claims, money and power.

By digging up the children's remains they can finally give the children a proper burial and use the evidence to finally bring the perpetrators - the Churches and the State to international courts where justice can be served for crimes against humanity.

Response a 'stage' towards repairing relations

2011-09-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

TÁNAISTE'S REACTION: TÁNAISTE EAMON Gilmore said the response from the Holy See to the Cloyne report went “a stage” towards repairing relations with the Catholic Church, but the Vatican still needed to understand the anger of the Irish people regarding the abuse scandals.

Taking issue with the report’s tone, Mr Gilmore said it failed to reflect the unique position the church had enjoyed in Irish society. He recognised the Vatican had apologised and expressed shame over child abuse by clerics.

“You’ve seen the terms in which it’s expressed where they say that they are sorry and ashamed for what has happened,” he told The Irish Times . This had to be acknowledged as a response to the anger felt in Ireland, he said. He noted “various other indications” of the seriousness with which the Vatican viewed “appalling” evidence of abuse in the diocese of Cloyne and elsewhere.

Read more

Victims disappointed with response

2011-09-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

REACTION: VICTIMS OF clerical sexual abuse in the diocese of Cloyne expressed disappointment at the Vatican’s statement and accused Rome of failing to accept responsibility for the abuse perpetrated by some of its priests.
One woman, who had testified to the Murphy commission about how she was abused, said the statement reminded her of comments by Msgr Denis O’Callaghan, Bishop John Magee’s designated child protection officer, after the Cloyne report was published.

“Again it seems to me they are shirking responsibility, saying it’s not their fault. It reminds me of O’Callaghan after the report came out. They are so out of touch with the reality of what it is to be abused, they just don’t get it.

“They are never going to realise and appreciate what this is all about until they meet people like myself and the other girls who were abused and hear what it’s been like for us and the impact that this has had on our lives for the past 30 years or more.”

Another woman, who also testified before Judge Murphy, also questioned the sincerity of the Vatican’s apology and said that it had an all-too-familiar ring to it, with the Vatican doing nothing to help bring abusive priests to justice.

“It makes no mention of the fact that Magee wrote up two versions of his meeting with Fr Brendan Wrixon where he admitted abuse: one which Magee sent to Rome confirming the abuse and one which he gave to the gardaí, making no mention of Wrixon’s admission.”

Read more

It takes 25 pages and 11,000 words to say - 'nothing to do with us'

2011-09-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

ANALYSIS: The Holy See reaction to the Irish report is marked by a failure to address core concerns, writes PATSY McGARRY

THE VATICAN’S response to the Cloyne report, as well as to comments by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and motions passed by Dáil and Seanad, would have us believe that the clerical child sex abuse scandals in Ireland are an Irish problem, where Rome’s only involvement has been in helping with a solution.

For this, it believes, it has received little or no acknowledgement in Ireland. For instance, Saturday’s response noted that nowhere in his Dáil speech of July 20th last did Kenny recognise any of its efforts to improve matters in this context, and that Pope Benedict’s Letter to the Catholics of Ireland in March last year didn’t even merit a mention in the Cloyne report.

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Inquiries under way into alleged abuse at Cork school

2011-08-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

THREE SEPARATE investigations are under way into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart congregation while managing their Coláiste an Chroí Naofa school in Carraig na bhFear, near Cork city.

Last night both the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald and Minister for Justice Alan Shatter welcomed decisions by the HSE and an Garda Síochána to investigate “concerns regarding the welfare and protection of children who attended a boarding school in Carraig na bhFear, Cork, run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart”.

It is also understood the congregation requested that the Catholic Church’s child protection watchdog, the National Board for Safeguarding Children, conduct a review of child protection procedures at the school, which is currently under way.

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Rift Grows Between Ireland, Vatican Over Priest Abuse Allegations

2011-08-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

Fr Donncha Mac Cárthaigh brother investigated sex abuse claims

2011-08-05T18:42:00.000-07:00

July 29, 2011

THE first complaint of sexual abuse against the former principal of Carrignavar College and Cork GAA selector, Fr Donncha Mac Cárthaigh, was investigated by his brother, who was then the head of his order in Ireland.

The complaint was lodged against Fr Donncha in 1986. In his statement to the Seanad, using Dáil privilege, Senator Mark Daly revealed how this initial inquiry was headed by his brother, the then provincial superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Fr Ciarán Mac Cárthaigh.

Cloyne report finds failures by church, State agencies

2011-07-21T20:57:00.001-07:00

irishtimes.com

The Vatican was “entirely unhelpful” to any bishop who wanted to implement procedures for dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic Church, a report has found.

The Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne states that a decision by the Vatican to brand a framework document on child sexual abuse, agreed by the Irish Bishops Conference in 1996, as “not an official document” effectively gave individual Irish bishops “the freedom to ignore” the guidelines.

The Vatican response “can only be described as unsupportive especially in relation to the civil authorities,” the commission said in its 341 page report.

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Background to the Cloyne report

2011-07-21T20:56:00.001-07:00

Background: The decision to extend the remit of a State inquiry into clerical child sexual abuse to include the Diocese of Cloyne in January 2009 by the then minister for children Barry Andrews followed the publication of a church report critical of practices in the Co Cork diocese.

The report, by the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church (NBSC), was highly critical of the way in which the Diocese of Cloyne and Bishop John Magee had handled a series of complaints made by five people against two priests.

Irish Times
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Another suspicious baby’s death in the care of Nuns in Ireland

2011-06-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

Mysterious death of Ireland baby resembles same signs of recently exposed baby trafficking scandal and illegal adoption scheme run by Catholic Nuns in Spain

(Vaticancrimes.us) - The world has recently learned of the baby scandal in Spain where over 300,000 babies were stolen by nuns in hospitals and catholic maternity homes where mothers would be told that their babies were “still-born”, when the nuns were in fact trafficking the babies and selling them into adoptions.

This alarming baby trafficking ring certainly makes one wonder about the recently revealed case in Ireland, where a mother left her perfectly healthy baby in the care of the catholic nuns and after only 4 days in their care – the baby was proclaimed “dead”. The nuns even dared to send the parents a note telling them not to worry and that “the burial would be taken care of” – a chilling expression, as this is the exact same words that the unsuspecting mothers in Spain were told about the so-called “still-born” babies…

Below, we have included the details of the Ireland case of Baby Marion which til this day remains unsolved as the nuns refuse to speak and the government for the past 9 years has refused to give the Howe family permission to exhume the body - which would unveil the truth about her death.

With the recent discovery of the worldwide baby trafficking scheme and illegal adoption scheme administered by the nuns have in hospitals and maternity of various countries (including 300,000 babies in Ireland, over 500,000 in Australia and another 500,000 in Canada) – if the nuns and the government had nothing to hide, then they why would the Howe be refused permission to exhume the body of Baby Marion? Could it be that the nuns fear it will reveal what was discovered in Spain, where the exhumed coffins were filled with nothing but bloody sheets since the babies were in fact sold to adoptive parents?

Take a look at the gruesome hardship that the Howe family has been forced to endure in search for the truth about Baby Marion Howe – the baby proclaimed “dead” by the very same catholic order - Sisters of Mercy - responsible for the torture of over 30,000 women in Ireland and Australia's Magdalene Laundries, and over 25,000 children who endured physical, sexual and emotional abuse in their institutions, as well as the thousands of documented stories of murder told by the survivors who witnessed other children being killed while in the of care of these nuns. Yes, the very same catholic order of nuns exposed in the 1996 scandal when over 150 human remains were found by new land owners who bought the land from the Sisters of Mercy and started digging the premises to construct…

The Story of Baby Marion Howe

On May 17th 1955, Christina Howe dressed her beloved baby daughter Marion in her best frilly lemon dress, combed her freshly washed blonde hair, adding a kiss curl to the top, before giving her a last kiss and cuddle. Marion, a happy bouncing baby, waved goodbye, calling out 'dayday' to her mother and one of her sister's, Mary, in the normal baby vernacular of a bright child just discovering language. She was then handed over to the 'care' of the nuns in Goldenbridge Orphanage; where she was due to spend the next two weeks while Christina recovered from an illness in hospital. Christina never saw her baby daughter alive again; for after only four days in the nun's care, the nuns claimed baby Marion was dead. She was only eleven months old and perfectly healthy baby.

Marion's father Myles was working in England in the 1950's, supporting his wife and five children, when Christina was taken ill and sent into hospital to convalesce. With their grandmother caring for the other children, on the suggestion of the Almoner of Meath Hospital- who assured Christina her youngest baby would be well-cared for by the Sisters of Mercy - she agreed to send Marion to Goldenbridge Orphanage for two weeks while she got better. On May 21st just four days after Christina sent her baby to Goldenbridge, Myles received a telegram in England informing him that his baby daughter was dead.

‘Our father got a telegram, telling him Marion was dead and not to bother corning back as they would take care of everything,' says Frances Howe, Marion's sister. 'They hadn't even bothered to tell my mother. He was in shock, grief-stricken, so he dropped everything and came home immediately. He went straight to Saint Ultan's hospital, and asked the sisters what had happened to his baby, and was brought in to see baby Marion, where one of the sisters said to him that it was a 'shame we had got to her far too late.' Frances adds: 'her legs and head were bandaged -when he pulled the leg bandages aside he saw that her legs had been burned. There were two identical bums on the inner part of her knees that were so deep you could see the bone. My dad always described them as being the size of silver dollars.'

Myles Howe realized immediately that something terrible had happened to his daughter, so went straight to Kilrnainharn Garda (local police) station to file a complaint. ‘The police told him to come back in a couple of days,' says Frances. 'When he went back he was told it was just an unfortunate accident and to let it go. In those days the law just wasn’t on their side. People had no voice.'

In the grief and pain of losing their baby, Myles and Christina went to Goldenbridge two weeks after her death to try and get some answers. They were not looking to cause trouble; like any parents they only wanted to understand why their beloved child had died. However when the door was opened on the bereft couple, Sister Xavier, the nun in charge, responded to their heartfelt pleas by waving her hand in a gesture of dismissal, saying 'it was only a baby' before the door was closed in their faces. That any human being could treat grieving parents with such callousness beggar’s belief, but she did, and the Howe’s were forced to go home distraught; no closer to the truth of what had happened to their adored youngest child.

The death certificate stated that baby Marion had died of acute dysentery infection, (with no mention of bums) but the couple never saw a post mortem report, police report or hospital report pertaining to their daughter. Broken-hearted they had no choice but to get on with their lives for the sake of their other children, and although they did, much had changed:

‘Our parents never trusted anyone to look after their kids,' remembers Frances. 'We went to adifferent school away from all our friends as they didn't trust us to be educated by nuns. Our mother used to say if she had pockets in her apron big enough, she’d mind us all in it.'

Baby Marion was a constant presence in their lives, with Christina including her in their thoughts and celebrating her birthdays without fail; talking about her, wondering who she would look like if she had lived. But there was also sadness: 'We would see our mother upset,' recalls Frances with tears in her eyes. ‘We’d ask her what was wrong and she would try and hide it, but it was always there, that sadness.' Mary, the sister who waved goodbye to Marion on that day in 1955 has no memory of the rest of her childhood, so badly traumatized was she by what happened to her sister. But somehow the family retained their faith and Christina would tell her children that their baby sister' was anger up in heaven, with God'.

In 1996 when the police re-opened the case, the Sisters of Mercy told them that there had never been a Marion Howe in their care. There was no record of her arrival in Goldenbridge so it was only when the police discovered her name in the 'sick book' (beside the entry, 'leg burnt/ history of vomiting') after a search of the orphanage, that they finally admitted baby Marion had been in Goldenbridge. Do we need to ask ourselves why the sisters would go to such lengths to conceal the truth, or do we already know the answer? The Howe’s discovered that people would not, or could not, speak out. 'We put out an appeal in the newspapers in 1997, asking people if they remembered anything,' explains Frances, ‘but people were afraid to talk. They still are.'

Baby Marion’s case went before the courts in 1997. It was to be a test case, the outcome of which would either open, or close forever, the floodgates for all the other victims of institutional abuse in Ireland. Before trial the Howe’s agreed to settle the case out of court for the sum of £20,000. While the money never mattered, Christina Howe, who had fought the case while ill with cancer, saw the settlement as the only way of ensuring that other victims of institutional abuse got their chance to be heard in court.

‘Our mother said that if she couldn't help those children in 1955, she’d help them now’ remembers Frances. 'She died six months and seven days after the trial. And she died with a broken heart, never knowing what had happened to her baby.' Myles also died never knowing what happened to his much loved daughter.

Incredibly the Sisters of Mercy never admitted any liability for what happened to baby Marion; nor did they apologize for her death. Instead they apologized: 'IF there had been a lack of caring or compassion at the time.' That says it all- even with their backs against the wall the Sisters of Mercy did not have the humanity to stand up and acknowledge their own failings.

Today, 54 years after baby Marion's death, her family- whose grief and pain at the loss of their sister is still palpable- has yet to discover the truth about what happened to that beautiful baby girl during those four days at Goldenbridge. This shadow has affected every aspect of their lives. ‘Our own children are also touched by this' explains Geraldine Howe, who also works within this close-knit family to find the truth. 'My own nine-year old daughter told me she was sick of this project I was always doing, and asked 'why those people couldn't tell the truth so that we could then go the police, who live up by aunty Frances' . All our children are deeply affected.'

This is not about compensation or money. The Howe’s are quick to reiterate that they only want the truth. They now hope that they can get permission to have baby Marion’s body exhumed in a last attempt to find out why she died, so they can finally put it behind them and get on with their lives. That these crimes against the most vulnerable in our society - our children - remained hidden for so long is, in itself, a crime; that the Howe family should be still forced to fight for the truth is an indictment of our society- government, religious and secular- as a whole. In this so-called era of accountability and openness their story is a harsh reminder that there are still many dark secrets lurking in the history of our state; secrets that it seems, will never come to light.

•The Howe family desperately needs information pertaining to those days in May 1955. If you were in Goldenbridge Orphanage, working with the babies or as a resident, or if you have information that you think may help, please call: (305) 433-6966 or email us at contact@vaticancrimes.us. Any information will be treated in the strictest confidence.

Hunger Strike for Justice - Ryan Report 2009

2011-05-31T13:01:00.001-07:00

Ireland abuse victims speak out about the power of the Catholic Church: TeleGracia Investigates

2011-05-18T16:46:00.001-07:00

No To The Beatification of John Paul II, Pedophile Protector

2011-05-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

The Protect Your Children Foundation reveals information that proves John Paul II to be the biggest protector of pedophilia and abuse in history

APRIL 29, 2011 – The Protect Your Children Foundation (Protegeatushijos.org) announces today this weekend´s campaign to alert the world about the true face of Karol Wojtyla, better known to the religious world as JOHN PAUL II. The series of irrefutable evidence to be presented demonstrate this man does not deserve to be “beatified”, as he was the main protector of the worst catholic pedophile priests in history.

The Protect Your Children Foundation is dedicated to the investigation of evil and wicked men that utilize the name of God to commit crimes. It counts with a whole system of information analysis (SIS) and verification data with base in more than 30 nations in order to bring information supported by strong evidence, to alert entire communities to protect children from these criminals.

On this occasion, the Foundation will be dedicating three (3) days of publishing valuable information that proves that the beatification of Karol Wojtyla is a tremendous insult and an abominable crime against the millions victims of the pedophile clergy covered up worldwide by John Paul II.

Amongst the evidence shown, the Foundation is making available the book entitled “John Paul and Benedict XVI, the biggest protectors of pedophile priests”, which will be available online free of charge through their website at:http://jh.to/encubridor

ProtegeATusHijos.org has confirmed the support of news groups such as Global News Distribution, VaticanCrimes.us, TeleGracia TV and its 600 cable companies available in 16 countries, as well as Radio NetGracia with an audience in 80 nations, amongst others in order to bring these truths to light in six languages.

Read the letter sent to the media worldwide:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/54177853/Medios-de-Comunicacion-Reciben-Pruebas-que-Juan-Pablo-II-NO-debe-ser-beatificado

Video: Testimonies of victims whose stories John Paul II never wanted to hear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyhdaTQCS4

ABOUT THE PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FOUNDATION:

ProtegeATusHijos.org was established with the purpose of investigating the atrocious crimes committed against children around the world by men and women who use the name of God to gain their trust and commit evil acts against them. The Foundation counts with hundreds of collaborators in 30 nations with the compromise of unmasking these criminals who most often are never brought to jail. It also investigates and publishes information that gives alert to communities and families whose children are not protected.

For more information, visit: www.ProtegeATusHijos.org or www.vaticancrimes.us

CONTACT:

Spanish:

Sonia Fox

Tel. +1 (786) 228-8011

contactanos@protegeatushijos.org

English:

Axel Cooley

Tel. +1 (305) 433-6966

axel@journalist.com

# # #

In brief: Ex-priest guilty of sex assault

2011-02-16T06:52:00.000-08:00

02/11/2011

Link

www.herald.ie

A FORMER priest is to be sentenced for indecently assaulting a female more than 30 years ago.

The 79-year-old man, who can't be named for legal reasons, has pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to eight counts of indecently assaulting the woman at two locations in the city on dates between 1980 and 1984.

Defence counsel said his client wished to convey apologies to the victim.

The man was remanded on continuing bail until his sentence hearing in July.

Robbery boy spared custody

A TEENAGER who took part in an attempted gang robbery and also caused €2,500 worth of damages has been spared a custodial sentence.

In October, the 15-year-old boy was described as having "tested the patience" of the Children's Court for his drink-fuelled crimes in central Dublin.

However, a positive probation report on the boy had been furnished and he was bound him to the peace for the attempted robbery for 12 months. The remaining charges were struck out with a warning he must not re-offend.

New York Times Magazine says Irish Turning Their Back on Church

2011-02-16T06:50:00.000-08:00

02/10/2011

Link

www.irishcentral.com

This weekend the “New York Times Magazine” will lead with a hard hitting article outlining the clerical abuse crisis in Ireland, and the fall-off in religious belief as a result.

It quotes Father Mark Patrick Hederman, the abbot of Glenstal Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Co. Limerick, as saying the church is indeed in deep trouble.

Hederman said, “Ireland is a prime example of what the church is facing, because they made this island into a concentration camp where they could control everything. And the control was really all about sex. They told you if you masturbated, it meant you were impure and had allowed the devil to work on you. Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.”

Between 1974 and 2008 Mass attendance in Ireland was cut in half. The Irish, says the “Times,” are turning their back on the church which was once the foundation of their country, its special place enshrined in the constitution.

The article looks at the abuse victims and also the country’s reaction to wave after wave of abuse scandals which emerged within the Irish Catholic Church.

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The Irish Affliction

2011-02-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

02/09/2011

Link

www.nytimes.com

Nonetheless, Ireland is the first country to bring the force of its federal government to bear against the church, according to Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest who was once a canon lawyer for the Vatican embassy in the U.S. and later represented sexual-abuse victims and also served as an expert consultant to the Irish investigations. “There have been three commissions in Ireland, and all were government funded, all chaired by judges,” he says. “In other places with a traditional Catholic presence and where there has been sexual abuse, there is intense interest in what is going on in Ireland. Quebec has now begun an investigation. There are signs of it beginning in the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and France.” Ireland, then, provides a model for investigative legal action on a host of fronts.

Not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to control the damage in Ireland. The pope has organized a team of top churchmen from outside the country, who are traveling through Ireland now and who will reportedly investigate not just its abuse scandal but also its system for training priests and running parishes. Martin Long, spokesman for the Irish Bishops’ Conference, described this “visitation” as “an offer of assistance from the holy father, and it is welcome.” But it, too, has angered many in Ireland, who say that it is precisely the sort of top-down approach that has put the church into its current state.

The Rev. John Littleton, onetime head of the defunct National Conference of Priests of Ireland and a prominent Catholic voice in the country, said bluntly, “We don’t need help from Rome.” The Rev. Sean McDonagh, a leader of the Association of Irish Priests, which formed last year after the reports were published, suggested that to get at the root of the problem, the team of investigators “should begin by scrutinizing Rome’s own handling of sex-abuse allegations.”

Irish state consider further charges against pedophile Oliver O’Grady

2011-02-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

01/29/2011

Link

www.irishcentral.com

State lawyers have confirmed that they are considering further charges against the defrocked pedophile priest Oliver O’Grady.

Currently O’Grady is living in Citi Hostel, Charlemont Street, Dublin. He has been remanded on bail for bail for another four weeks awaiting instructions from the Department of Public Prosecution (DPP).

Currently he is accused of the possession of pornographic image on USB keys and a hard drive at Citi Hostel, on December 10 last year. He appeared in court this week and has now been remanded for four week.

Judge Cormac Dunne has confirmed that the 65-year-old defrocked priest could receive further charges.

O’Grady confessed to molesting up to 25 children in the United States. He was charged with the molestation of two brothers between 1978 and 1991.

However, during an interview for the award-winning documentary “Deliver Us From Evil,” he confessed to having molested up to 25 children.

His acts cost the Stockton diocese millions in settlement claims from sexual abuse lawsuits.

In 1993, he went to prison to serve a 14-year-sentence for his crimes. He was released after six years and deported to Ireland.

He will appear in court on February 25 for further direction from the DPP.

Former priest may face further charges, court told

2011-02-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

01/29/2011

Link

www.irishtimes.com

THE DPP is considering pressing further charges against a defrocked priest accused of possession of thousands of pornographic images of children, it was confirmed yesterday.

Oliver O’Grady (65), with an address at a hostel on Charlemont Street, Dublin, was granted bail at Dublin District Court last month following his arrest and was remanded to appear yesterday.

Judge Cormac Dunne said he noted on the defendant’s last appearance that the court was told further charges could be brought and asked “is that still contemplated”. Det Johanna Doyle of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation replied “yes”.

Defence solicitor Kieran Conway said there was consent to an adjournment. Judge Dunne remanded Mr O’Grady on continuing bail to appear on February 25th pending directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions. The former priest remained silent during his brief court appearance.

Earlier the court heard the defendant had lived at various addresses in Ireland since he was deported from the United States, in 2001. He rents a lock-up facility and a postbox to store his belongings. As part of his bail conditions he must sign on twice daily at Harcourt Terrace Garda station. He also undertook not to seek travel documentation and has surrendered his passport to gardaí.

The material allegedly confiscated included images and videos on a USB key, an external hard drive and a laptop. Det Doyle told the court: “We are talking about thousands upon thousands of images of child pornography. Children from the age of two and three up to teenage boys and girls.”

State considers more charges against O’Grady

2011-02-01T06:22:00.000-08:00

01/28/2011

Link

www.breakingnews.ie

Lawyers for the State have confirmed further charges are still being considered against a defrocked priest accused of possessing child pornography.

Oliver O’Grady with an address at the Citi hostel in Charlemont Street, Dublin, has been remanded on bail for a further four weeks to await DPP instructions.

He is accused of possessing thousands of pornographic images on USB keys and a hard drive at the Citi Hostel on December 10 last.

He was arrested on that date and was in court today dressed in jeans and a green jacket for a brief remand appearance.

Judge Cormac Dunne received confirmation that further charges may still be brought against the 65-year-old defrocked priest.

He has put the case back until February 25 to await DPP directions.

One last chance for the Vatican to come clean

2011-02-01T06:17:00.000-08:00

01/25/2011

Link

www.universitytimes.ie

Amid less turbulent political circumstances, the Would You Believe documentary that was shown on RTÉ1 on Monday, 17th January last would have received far more attention than it did. It was an excellent piece of investigative journalism.

The programme revealed a previously undisclosed letter that was written to Ireland’s Catholic bishops in January 1997 by the then papal nuncio to Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero.

In the letter, Archbishop Storero, who is now deceased, expressed the ‘serious reservations’ of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy about the Irish church’s 1996 Child Sex Abuse framework document. In particular, the Archbishop wrote that ‘mandatory reporting’ to civil authorities of clerical sex abuse cases ‘gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature’.

While many have previously suspected that the Holy See encouraged bishops not to report abuse cases to the police, this is the first time that a document expressing such a view has come to light publically.

While Dr. Storero’s letter does not excuse the Irish bishop’s from their failure to report crimes to the Gardaí, it does shed light on the internal politics of the situation and the conflict that the bishops faced. On the one hand, the bishops had a duty to report a crime in the same way as any sensible person with any sort of conscience would do. However, at the same time they were receiving conflicting instructions from their superiors in Rome, who they were sworn to obey.

Clerical sex abuse victims take part in papal inquiry

2011-01-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

01/22/2011

Link

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Victims of historical clerical abuse met with the former Archbishop of Westminster in Newry yesterday as part of a Vatican probe into sex crimes committed within the Irish Catholic Church.

Last March Pope Benedict announced the probe, formally known as an apostolic visitation, following the publication of two damning reports by the Irish government which found a culture of systematic cover-up of paedophile priests and allegations of abuse.

In an open letter the Vatican said it wanted “to respond adequately to the situation caused by the tragic cases of abuse” and promote the “spiritual and moral renewal” of the Irish Church.

Five senior prelates were chosen to carry out the inquiry in the four diocese of Armagh, Dublin, Cashel-Emly and Tuam.

But their roles are to gather information and report to Rome, not resolve any issues raised.

New priest pedophile scandal set to break in Ireland

2011-01-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

01/22/2011

Link

www.irishcentral.com

Eight cases concerning a pedophile priest in County Cork accused of raping young girls have been sent back to authorities there after originally being rejected.

All of the files relate to abuse allegations alleged to have been carried out by Father B, a cleric who assaulted and raped girls in North Cork.

The diocese of Cloyne and its former bishop John Magee are already under separate investigations for harboring pedophile priests.

Magee was Secretary to three popes and was a leading figure in the Irish church until the pedophile investigations began. Opponents claim he used his clout to block investigations.

Clerical abuse inquiry panel to meet NI victims

2011-01-25T12:15:00.000-08:00

01/21/2011

Link

www.bbc.co.uk

The Apostolic Visitation set up by the Pope last year is to meet the main group representing Northern Ireland victims of clerical abuse, in Newry on Friday.

Pope Benedict announced the Visitation in March last year in a pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland.

It followed the publication of reports into abuse in Catholic institutions and in the Dublin archdiocese.

It has held meetings across NI and the Irish Republic this month.

The panel is being led by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the retired archbishop of Westminster.

Margaret McGuckin, of Survivors and Victims of Institutional Abuse, said she was abused at a Sisters of Nazareth orphanage in Belfast from the age of three.

She said she hoped the ongoing talks with senior members of the Catholic clergy "are not just for show".

Eight Cloyne clerical abuse files to be resent to DPP

2011-01-25T12:06:00.000-08:00

01/21/2011

Link

irishexaminer.com

AT least eight files on clerical abuse in Cloyne, which were sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and returned without prosecution, are to be resent to the DPP’s office as one large file.

The files all relate to abuse alleged to have been carried out by the notorious Father B, who systematically assaulted and raped girls in North Cork.

The files were all returned in recent years — to the outrage of the victims who have said the files all show remarkable similarities.

When the two latest files were returned in the Autumn, the victims mounted a public campaign seeking answers as to why their criminal cases were being repeatedly returned.

Many of the women whose files were returned have received compensation from the diocese for their abuse and written apologies have also been handed over to the women.

"The archbishop has repeatedly said that if there are any more victims out there, they should come forward and lodge complaints.

"Our fear is that if they hear of all these cases being rejected, they won’t see the point of going to the gardaí," said one victim.

A ninth single file outlining abuse by Father B is at the DPP’s office at present. This victim came forward for the first time last year.

In recent months, the Rape Crisis Centre urged the DPP to meet the victims in Cloyne to discuss his decision not to prosecute.

Gardaí resubmit files on sex abuse

2011-01-20T14:07:00.000-08:00

01/20/2011

Link

www.irishtimes.com

GARDAÍ IN Cork have resubmitted eight files to the Director of Public Prosecutions relating to complaints by seven women and a man that they were sexually assaulted as children by a priest in the Diocese of Cloyne.

The complaints against the now elderly cleric in the new combined file allege that he sexually assaulted the women and the man when they were teenagers at locations in north and mid-Cork in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Seven of the eight files had already been submitted to the DPP who decided against a prosecution of the cleric, who is now in his early 70s, but gardaí have since resubmitted the seven files along with an eighth file where a decision is still pending.

The priest, who was identified by Ian Elliott, the chief executive of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, as Fr B, has been interviewed by gardaí in relation to each of the complaints and has denied that he ever abused any of the complainants.

Read more

Vatican letter shows ‘Paedophiles not keen on being identified as paedophiles’

2011-01-20T14:02:00.000-08:00

01/19/2011

Link

newsthump.com

A 1997 letter from the Vatican to Ireland’s Catholic Bishops has proven once and for all that paedophiles aren’t all that keen on being identified as paedophiles.

Obtained by Irish broadcaster RTE, the letter shows Vatican officials rejected an initiative to report all priests accused of abuse, insisting that ‘paedophile is such an ugly word’, and that ‘perhaps we should just leave it all well enough alone?’.

Campaigners for child abuse victims insist this is the proof needed to show that paedophiles aren’t as proud of the title as some have suggested.

Spokesperson Gary Matthews told us, “People talk about ‘paedophile rings’, and their use of ‘social networking’, but we’ve always felt that paedophiles are actually quite secretive and prefer not to be known as such. This letter finally proves it.”

Secret Vatican Edict: Don't Report Abusive Priests

2011-01-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

01/19/2011

Link

www.newser.com

NEWSER) – The Vatican is scrambling to explain a secret 1997 edict rejecting an Irish Catholic Church proposal to report pedophile priests to the local authorities. The “strictly confidential” document, obtained by Ireland’s RTE television for a new documentary, said that reporting priests might give them grounds to appeal to the Holy See, which would be “highly embarrassing and detrimental.” One Irish bishop called it “a mandate … to conceal the reported crimes of a priest.”

At a 1999 meeting in Rome, Irish church authorities were reminded they were “bishops first, not policemen,” according to the Irish Times. Abuse victims in the US called the document “the smoking gun we’ve been looking for.” But the Church tells the AP that the document is being misinterpreted. The church, a spokesman contends, merely wanted to ensure that canonical law was followed precisely so priests couldn't avoid church punishments. Some priests, he explained, solicited sex in confessionals, meaning that under church law, it must be dealt with in secrecy.

The Tangled Web Tightens for the Vatican

2011-01-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

01/19/2011

Link

www.patheos.com

Headlines around the world this week have reported that Irish broadcaster RTE obtained a 1997 letter from the Vatican that instructed Irish bishops not to report child sex abuse by priests to the police. According to the letter, "the situation of ‘mandatory reporting' gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature."

Survivors are calling this the "smoking gun" that proves the Vatican's complicity in the abuse cover-up. They are right, but that is not the whole story with this letter.

Absolutely no one should be surprised by this direct expression of what everyone should have known already: the Vatican has orchestrated a conspiracy of secrecy about child abuse for decades, if not centuries.

Once the practice of covering up the identities of priest child sex abusers was established beyond a doubt in Boston, then incrementally, the entire United States, and then Europe, and Mexico, and South America, could anyone actually believe the cover-ups were a colossal coincidence? When you have a top-down hierarchical institution with an ever-repeating pattern of abuse/cover-up/move around/abuse/cover-up/move around, the resulting secrecy is no accident.

Confidential message to Irish clergy could feed lawsuits around world

2011-01-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

01/18/2011

Link

A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure with the potential to fuel more lawsuits worldwide against the Vatican, which has long denied any involvement in coverups.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of an Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests.

The letter's message undermines persistent Vatican claims that the church never instructed bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. Instead, the letter emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Vatican letter on sex abuse from '97 revealed

2011-01-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

01/18/2011

Link

www.cbc.ca

Irish TV show charges Vatican urged bishops to keep silent on abuse

2011-01-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

01/17/2011

Link

www.catholicculture.org

An Irish television documentary, scheduled to be aired on Monday evening, January 17, will report that a leading Vatican official discouraged Irish bishops from reporting priestly abuse to law-enforcement officials.

The “Would You Believe” program, broadcast on the RTE network, quotes Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the former prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, as telling Irish bishops that they should be “fathers to your priests, not policemen.”

Advance publicity about the RTE program included some confused reporting. Accused priests have the right under canon law to appeal to the Vatican if their bishops seek to laicize them; the Irish Examiner and Irish Times claim that the Vatican failed to enforce the provisions of canon law in several cases, when in fact the Vatican was insisting on observing the canons. The Irish Times adds an inaccurate report that in 2005 Pope Benedict failed to enforce canon law in the case of Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ—who was in fact removed from public ministry on the Pope’s initiative.

New chapter opened in sex abuse claims

2011-01-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

01/06/2011

Link

www.startribune.com

A man who alleges he was sexually abused by an Irish priest in Granite Falls, Minn., when he was 8 years old is suing Catholic dioceses in Minnesota and Ireland. It's the first lawsuit brought by St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson in a new venture to take on clergy sex abuse cases in Europe.

Anderson and Ann Olivarius, a London-based solicitor, held a news conference on Tuesday in London to announce the launch of a legal practice to advocate for victims of clergy abuse in the United Kingdom.

Anderson, who for the past 27 years has taken on thousands of clergy sex abuse cases in the United States, said Olivarius approached him about a partnership.

"It seemed we needed the same kind of pressure for justice and accountability on this side of the Atlantic," she said.

Irish Protesters demand end to government collusion with Catholic church child rapists: ITCCS members rally in Dublin, issue statement

2011-01-08T10:57:00.000-08:00

Irish Protesters demand end to government collusion with Catholic church child rapists:
ITCCS members rally in Dublin, issue statement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDMG8kREu9E

Breaking News: Dublin, January 7, 2011

Protesters rallied yesterday outside government offices in Dublin to demand that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) stop shielding child rapists in the Catholic church, and threatening citizens who demand action.

Gerry O'Donovan, a member of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS), joined with Kevin Flanagan, Dave O'Brien and others in delivering a formal letter of protest to the government because of the DPP's refusal to bring charges against a Catholic priest, "Brother B", who has raped at least nine girls.

The protesters also pointed out that the DPP has even threatened to sue anyone who demands the prosecution of suspected child raping priests.

According to O'Donovan,

"In the DPP's letter to me it says 'Under Section 6 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1974, it is against the law to write to the Director to ask him to either stop or not to prosecute a case.' Me, Dave, Kevin and others have broken that law by writing to him as it is considered to be 'improper'. ".

O'Donovan also read from a statement issued by Kevin Annett for the ITCCS Executive, which announced the intention of the ITCCS Tribunal to investigate the DPP's actions when it convenes next September in London.

The Irish group is planning a similar protest tomorrow in Cork. For more information contact the ITCCS at ITCCS101@gmail.com .

Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDMG8kREu9E

See the evidence of Genocide in Canada at www.hiddennolonger.com

Watch Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT on his website www.hiddenfromhistory.org

"We will bring to light the hidden works of darkness and drive falsity to the bottomless pit. For all doctrines founded in fraud or nursed by fear shall be confounded by Truth."

- Kevin's ancestor Peter Annett, writing in The Free Inquirer, October 17, 1761, just before being imprisoned by the English crown for "blasphemous libel"

"I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him."

Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba

La verdadera cara: "Escuelas Industriales" en Irlanda administradas por el vaticano

2011-01-02T18:32:00.000-08:00

Fuente: Vaticancrimes.us

Uno de los temas que aun es obscuro y desconocido por el mundo entero acerca de los abusos de millones de niños por sacerdotes y monjas en este país es el tema de las “Escuelas Industriales” las cuales eran manejadas por la iglesia católica bajo la custodia de los hermanos cristianos.

La primera escuela industrial fue fundada en 1870 aquí en Dublín, expandiéndose posteriormente hacia el Reino Unido, Australia, Canadá, India, Estados Unidos y otros países. Se caracterizaban por contar con suficientes extensiones de terreno para trabajar la tierra y con una estrategia per – cápita en las cuales, los mayores dividendos se producirían al llenar estos sitios con gran cantidad de fuerza laboral gratis.

Con tales propósitos, la iglesia católica en Irlanda en conjunto con el Departamento de Educación se confabularon para poner estos sitios repletos de niños, haciéndose de cualquier excusa para encarcelarlos allí como criminales, como por ejemplo si eran nacidos de madres solteras eran arrebatados de ellas y llevados allí por ser “hijos bastardos” o “hijos del pecado,” el ser pobres, si faltabas a clases, si eran sorprendidos robando algo en la frutería era también una razón para ser llevados allí.

También el ser huérfano o de padres separados y como el divorcio no era permitido, estos niños eran retirados de sus padres y encerrados en estas escuelas. Por cada niño, estas órdenes religiosas recibían una cuota que representaba un tercio del salario de un trabajador, eso equivale como a 120 euros por niño por semana.

La explotación laboral y los abusos a los que fueron sometidos estos niños durante casi 100 años son indescriptibles. Violencia, hambre, abuso sexual, maltrato físico y emocional, explotación laboral y una baja educación son algunas de las vivencias de miles de niños de los cuales algunos con apenas edad suficiente para mover los brazos y caminar eran sometidos a largas rutinas de trabajo en el campo, labrando la tierra o en la cocina haciendo el pan.

Eso sin tomar en cuenta las golpizas y las violaciones a las que eran expuestos. Algunos no sobrevivían por ser tan frágiles si recibían una fuerte golpiza, a los días morían y el caso de un niño abusado sexualmente todos los días excepto en navidad.

A legadamente, la última escuela industrial de Irlanda cerró 1969, después los misteriosos incendios de los edificios son algunas de las preguntas que nos hacemos hoy. La comunidad admite que siempre supo lo que sucedía allí pero tenían miedo de hablar en contra de la iglesia. No se sabe el número exacto de niños que estuvieron allí, pero se estima que fueron alrededor de cientos de miles.

Actualmente, se alega que algunas escuelas siguen operando aun. En cuanto a los sobrevivientes de estas instituciones infernales, hoy en su gran mayoría viven del servicio social ya que al solicitar empleo, no eran admitidos por provenir de estas escuelas. Hoy las victimas piden justicia y demandan ser oídas, pero hasta ahora las autoridades han hecho caso omiso de sus peticiones sin reponer en lo mínimo, parte de los daños morales y materiales causados.

Shock among parishioners at the request by the Bishop Brennan for their help to pay compensation and bill

2011-01-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

Link
Irishtimes.com

THERE WAS shock yesterday among parishioners in Co Wexford at the request by the Bishop of Ferns Denis Brennan for their help to pay compensation and legal bills resulting from clerical child sex abuse claims.

Many people in Enniscorthy said the money should come from the sale of church assets rather than the pockets of parishioners.

“It is absolutely disgusting, an insult to the people and an insult to the Catholic Church,” said Peggy Kenny.

“All the money they have and the buildings the own, Rome is the place that should pay or it,” she said, adding that it would turn people against the church.

Another regular churchgoer had not yet decided if she would give a donation towards the €60,000 a year sought by the Ferns Diocesan Committee.

“It might be more appropriate if the Vatican paid the shortfall as there are a lot of people here who are directly affected [by abuse],” said Margaret, who did not want her full name used.

The majority would be willing to give “a few extra bob” as part of their collection. However, she felt the bishops’ recent visit to Rome was “rubbing people’s noses in it”.

In contrast, a Eucharistic minister at St Aidan’s Cathedral said she would support a collection. “I would give as there is no point looking back, we need to look forward,” she said.

“We as Catholics need to be there to try and get behind the priest . . . What would happen if we had no priest?” she asked.

As with many locals, Margaret had high praise and respect for Dr Brennan, whom she said was always upfront.

“Before he was made bishop he was meeting people who were abused. I don’t think he should be held responsible for what went on before him. He is trying to deal with it the best he can and make things right,” she said.

Eilish Dempsey was very religious until the reports of abuse in the Ferns diocese became public. “The cheek of them. I am very surprised as the bishop is very well thought of. Rome and the bishops should sell off their assets to pay for it,” she said.

One man who was at the meeting on Monday at which Dr Brennan made the appeal said just one member of the public stood up to speak.“This is the biggest disaster that has ever happened. It’s absolutely crazy to ask people given the property they have and the state the town’s economy is in,” the man said, asking not to be named due to his involvement in the parish. “I’m a Mass-goer and I won’t give money to this,” he whispered, standing on the main street of the town.

Paula Davis was among many who said that the church should sell assets and not ask parishioners for money.

“It’s disgraceful to expect the parish to pay for paedophile priests. They should sell off their assets to do this,” she said. “It’s like getting into debt and asking the priest to pay for something you’d done wrong.”

David Chambers said the diocese must have “blinkers on” asking for money. “Why should parishioners have to pay?”

Trained counsellor Julie Whelan asked how this would help the victims: “How will this ever take away their life of pain and torment?”

The Ryan Report cover-up Irish child abuse:

2011-01-01T17:16:00.000-08:00

Link
The Ryan Report cover-up
Irish child abuse:

For all the details of sadistic physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect and brutalisation of children in Ireland’s industrial school system, the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA) is a cover up. Nine years of hearings, the probing of hundreds of childhood hells, have resulted in a huge report—five volumes and 3,000 pages—which will not lead to the prosecution of those individually or collectively guilty of crimes against thousands of children.

Neither has political responsibility been attributed. The report by Judge Sean Ryan continues to obscure the role of the Catholic Church, which is an essential element of the Irish state, and successive governments in operating a cruel workhouse system through which at least 170,000 children passed through in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

Even the publication of the report was characterised by official arrogance, contempt and indifference to former inmates who braved hearings and interviews, including cross examination by representatives of the religious orders in whose schools they were incarcerated and brutalised. Paddy Doyle, wheelchair bound, attempted to attend publication of the report last week in the Conrad Hotel, Dublin and was confronted by locked doors, PR and security men. When other victims of abuse managed to force their way into the hearing, police were called.

Co-ordinator of the campaign group Survivors of Child Abuse, John Kelly, told the press from the steps of the hotel, “There is nothing by way of justice in any means significant in this report, nothing…We were encouraged by this commission and by the former Taoiseach to open our wounds. We did this and they’ve been left gaping open.”

The Irish state has consistently refused to take any real action against the perpetrators. This is not only because it is complicit, by its silence, in the abuses. More fundamentally, it was dependent upon the Catholic Church to force submission onto numerous poor children exploited as cheap labour in its industrial school system.

The report was only commissioned in 1999 following decades in which the appalling conditions in the industrial religious schools were common knowledge. From as early as 1961 news broadcasts, films, plays and countless personal experiences led to numerous complaints being filed against schools. Yet only in 1999 did then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern commission the CICA inquiry under Judge Mary Laffoy. Laffoy published interim reports and reportedly won respect from the survivor groups, but found her investigations hampered by the Department of Education and the Church. Laffoy resigned in 2003 and Judge Sean Ryan was appointed.

In 2004, Ryan struck a deal to ensure continued participation from the religious orders, agreeing not to name those accused of abuse. The hundreds of religious brothers, nuns and lay persons accused of abuse have been given pseudonyms in the CICA report. Only those previously convicted of child abuse are named. Another deal in 2002 limited the financial liability of the orders to compensation claims to a maximum of €128 million.

The CICA report nevertheless does make clear the horrifying crimes of the child-care system. Dealing mainly with the period between 1930 and 1970, the commission interviewed 1,090 former residents of 216 schools, reformatories and day schools—90 percent of whom said they had been physically abused and over 500 sexually abused.

Compiling other information from the Department of Education, the Vatican and the schools themselves, the commission concluded that some 800 individuals were identified as having physically or sexually abused children in their care.

Nothing more clearly condemns the political system that emerged from the partition of Ireland, the accommodation reached between the Irish bourgeoisie, the Catholic Church, and the former imperialist master in Britain, than the protracted existence of a children’s gulag intended to provide cheap pliant, unskilled, largely agricultural, Catholic labour. Ireland maintained the industrial school system, run by various Catholic, orders until the 1970s.

Journalist Bruce Arnold wrote in the Irish Independent, “The report contains nothing about the steady flow of reform in the British system of childcare, begun by Winston Churchill when he was Home Secretary and continued throughout the grim period in which Tomas Derrig was our Minister for Education. From 1932, Derrig placed an iron fist on top of the smouldering drum of industrial school illegality and did nothing at all. Irregularly, cases came up in the court, the press and in the Dail. They cried out for investigation. Derrig always refused. Investigation was generally refused by other ministers. Nothing is said of this in the report.”

Arnold also noted that the report contains no serious assessment of the role of the District Courts, from which children were committed to the schools. The young people forced into the system—some 1.2 percent of the childhood population between 1936 and 1970—were from the poorest backgrounds. At any time between 5,000 and 6,000 were held in around 50 or so boarding institutions.

Children would be referred by the courts for begging, having no visible means of subsistence, no obvious guardian, being in the charge of parents who were in prison, or had criminal or otherwise dubious reputations. Others were referred for petty offences including non-attendance at school. Young girls who had been raped were sent to reformatories.

Most of the industrial schools held around 250 children. The largest, Artane near Dublin, held around 800. They were universally characterised by violence, fear, neglect, hunger, poor clothing, cold and miserable conditions, bullying, poor education, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

The greatest numbers of industrial schools were run by the Christian Brothers, which opened its first school in Dublin in 1870 and expanded operations to the UK, Australia, Canada, Gibraltar, India and the United States and still operates in 26 countries.

The Christian Brothers recruited young, often badly educated men from the age of 14 onwards, who took permanent vows of chastity and silence from the age of 25. They were entirely untrained, learning only by the primitive and brutal practice of their elders. The report notes, “The Christian Brothers became a powerful and dominant organisation in the State and were responsible for providing primary and post primary education to the majority of Catholic boys in the country.”

Industrial Schools were funded on a per-capita basis, encouraging the orders to cram in as many children as possible. The section on Artane notes reasons for committal between 1940 and 1969: 1,374 children were committed for “improper guardianship”, 1,045 for bad school attendance, 720 for destitution, 227 for being homeless, 220 for larceny, 90 for other crimes.

These children were plunged into a medieval environment, with the report compiling a vast litany of atrocities. A few examples are enough.

A letter from the head of the school warns Brother Beaufort, “You are passionate in your dealings with the boys. In fact at times you show so little control of your temper that you are in danger of inflicting serious bodily harm on the boys by your manner of correcting them.”

One victim was picked up and thrown around a class by Brother Beaufort, knocked unconscious, and was only saved by the intervention of another Brother. The child suffered lacerations, broken teeth, eye and neck injuries.

All the staff carried leather straps which were freely used on children. A Brother Oliver repeatedly beat children with particular violence. One victim reported, “I was running trying to get away from him. He hit me, it didn’t matter where, legs, back, head, anywhere…”

Oliver forced one 12-year-old child to lick excrement from his shoes.

Instruments of punishment included rubber from a pram wheel, hurley sticks, hurley balls, fists, finger nails and fan belts. One child’s hand was held in boiling water. Boys were repeated pulled around by the hair, punched, strapped for crimes such as being left handed, being slow, tearing a blanket, having worn out shoes.

Another inmate commented, “You don’t seem to understand, the place was built on terror, regular beatings were just accepted. What you’re hearing about is the bad ones, but we accepted as normal run of the mill from the minute you got up, that some time in that day you would get beaten.”

Sexual abuse was rife. Artane’s staff hosted a number of Brothers who had repeatedly been warned for “embracing and fondling” boys. Two such paedophiles went on to be hung for child murder in Canada. Others accused of rape, beat or bribed their victims into silence. Accused Brothers were invariably excused, lightly admonished or, typically, moved to other institutions where they were free to continue abusing children for decades.

The children provided cheap labour for running the institutions. A 1957 report by the Department of Education complained, “These lads really make the running of Artane possible yet in all the apartments devoted to the farm and the trades there is not a single toilet or wash-basin for these boys. They come into their meals in a shocking condition, hands, faces and clothes are covered with the grime of the trades, boots, stockings and portions of the trousers often soaking from working in the cowhouse or the manure pit.”

St Vincent’s Industrial School, Goldenbridge featured in two broadcasts, “Dear Daughter” and “States of Fear”, which undermined the official silence on the schools. Run by the Sisters of Mercy, young girls were held in conditions of neglect and near starvation, subject to repeated beatings. One victim summed up the lasting impact of their experience. Their comments could apply to the entire system.

“The screaming of children, the screaming of children will stay with me for the rest of my life about Goldenbridge. I still hear it, I still haven’t recovered from that. Children crying and screaming, it was just endless, it never never stopped for years in that place.”

Abuse compensation: The amount some Catholic Church dioceses have paid

2011-01-01T17:13:00.000-08:00

Link
Irishtimes.com

FERNS

Settlements : €12 (€8 million in settlement, and €4 million in legal costs, including costs arising from Ferns Inquiry)

Allegations : 20-plus

Civil actions : 60 (12 are pending)

DUBLIN

Settlements : €11 million (€7.6 million in settlements and €3.4 million in legal costs)

Allegations : 153

Civil action s: 133 (34 are pending)

TUAM

Settlements : €880,000 (€520,000 in settlement, €360,000 in legal costs)

Allegations : 22

Civil actions : 10

KERRY

Settlements : €500,000

Allegations : 26

Civil actions : 16 (four pending)

LIMERICK

Settlements : None, but about €50,000 in legal costs

Allegations : 18

Civil actions : none

DOWN AND CONNOR

Allegations : 18

Settlements : Details unavailable

WATERFORD AND LISMORE

Settlements : €95,000

Allegations : 14

Civil actions : One

KILDARE AND LEIGHLIN

Settlements : €355,000 (€305,000 in settlements, €50,000 in legal costs)

Allegations : 7

Civil actions : 4

O'Grady may face more charges

2011-01-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

Link

12/17/2010

Irishtimes

More charges could be brought against a defrocked priest accused of possession of thousands of pornographic images of children, a court heard today.

Oliver O’Grady (65), with an address at a hostel, on Charlemont Street, in Dublin 2 was granted bail at Dublin District Court on Saturday following his arrest on December 10th last and he was remanded to appear again today.

Defence solicitor Kieran Conway said there was consent to the case being adjourned pending directions from the DPP.

Det Gda Johanna Doyle of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation confirmed that the adjournment was for directions to be obtained and the possibility of “further charges.”

Vatican tried to protect paedophile priest, Dublin abuse report shows

2010-12-31T11:38:00.000-08:00

Link

Father Tony Walsh, imprisoned for raping boys last week, named in report as one of worst child abusers in Dublin archdiocese

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 December 2010 17.39 GMT
Article history

The Vatican tried to stop Irish church leaders from defrocking a paedophile priest whose abusive behaviour was known about from the early 1970s, a previously censored chapter from a report on clerical child abuse in Dublin revealed today.

Father Tony Walsh, who was imprisoned for raping boys last week, is named in the report as one of the worst child abusers in the Dublin archdiocese.

The chapter describes how church leaders ordered the defrocking of Walsh in 1993 after receiving complaints of abuse over 15 years. The Vatican overruled the verdict and ordered him to be sent to an Irish monastery instead.

Walsh was finally dismissed in 1996 after police opened a criminal investigation and he attacked a boy in a pub lavatory after a family funeral.

Murphy Report Chapter 19: Main points & timeline

2010-12-21T17:23:00.000-08:00

RTE News
Link

Initial claims

Two days after Tony Walsh's first appointment to Ballyfermot parish in July 1978, the parents of an eight-year-old boy complained that he had abused their son, but the Archdiocese made no response to the boy's parents.

Walsh denied the abuse and nothing further was done. The priest to whom the complaint was made noted 'the parents are most responsible people and there is no danger of publicity.'

Second complaint

The second complaint was made by the mother of a 14-year-boy that her son had been abused in Ballyfermot in 1978 and 1979. The parish priest said he would contact the Archbishop's house but the only action taken was that Fr Michael Cleary, based in Ballyfermot at the time, went to the boy's home in 1980 'to educate him on male sexuality.'

The boy's mother said Fr Cleary did apologise but there are no records of any communication with the Archdiocese and in 1985 a canon told a monsignor that matters were 'hushed up.' The priest did not report it to gardaí.

A former youth co-ordinator who later became a priest complained to the Archdiocese between 1980-82 about Walsh's activities with young girls at a Summer Camp. No action was taken.

Warning to Archbishop

The parish priest of Ballyfermot in 1984 was given 'a veiled warning' about Walsh by Archbishop Ryan. The report says either the Archbishop was not entirely convinced by an earlier allegation or was concerned about subsequent allegations.

March 1985 - Seven priests were aware of concerns about Walsh's behaviour.

The PP of Ballyfermot Fr Donal O Doherty told Monsignor Stenson, chancellor of the diocese and top administrator, about a series of events which caused him alarm.

He said he also told Bishop Donal Murray and they agreed 'if it occurred again, he should act'. It is not clear what 'it' means.

Questions remain as eyes turn to two serving bishops and canon lawyers

2010-12-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Link
PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent

ANALYSIS: Chapter 19 reveals that by March 1985, seven priests were aware of concerns about Walsh

TWO SERVING bishops have familiar questions to answer following publication last Friday of parts of the Murphy report which dealt with former priest Tony Walsh. They are Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey and Auxiliary Bishop Éamonn Walsh.

Bishop McAreavey, who as a canon lawyer sat on the tribunal which defrocked Tony Walsh in 1993, has remained silent since chapter 19 and relevant sections of chapter 4 of the Murphy report were published last Friday. He has yet to explain why he made no effort to report Walsh’s known criminal behaviour to the gardaí then or afterwards.

Others who served on the tribunal with him from January 1992 were the recently retired Bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh and the late Fr Paddy Corcoran.

All were canon lawyers.

Chapter 19 reveals that “by March 1985, at least seven priests of the Archdiocese were aware of concerns about Fr Jovito’s (Walsh’s) behaviour. At the request of Archbishop McNamara, (Chancellor) Monsignor (Alex) Stenson spoke to these priests”.

Did one of those “seven priests” include Bishop Éamonn Walsh?

He was dean at Clonliffe College (from 1977) when Tony Walsh was ordained from there in 1978. In the following decade Tony Walsh would admit abusing children while a seminarian there.

In 1985 Éamonn Walsh became secretary to the then archbishop of Dublin, Kevin McNamara. In March 1987 the archdiocese took out insurance against any possible future claims from victims of clerical child sex abuse. As the Murphy report puts it: “At this time, the archdiocese had knowledge of approximately 20 priests against whom allegations of child sexual abuse had been made, or about whom there were suspicions or concerns.”

In 1988 Msgr Desmond Connell became archbishop of Dublin. In April 1990 Éamonn Walsh became an auxiliary bishop of Dublin. In August 1990, to his great credit, he suggested at a meeting of the Dublin bishops that they should inform “the civil authorities” about Tony Walsh’s criminal activities, then known to the archdiocese for 12 years.

This was shot down.

In chapter 19 of the Murphy report, describing that meeting, former chancellor of the archdiocese Msgr Gerard Sheehy (deceased) wrote: “Bishop (Éamonn) Walsh made the outrageous suggestion that the Archbishop should inform the civil authorities about Fr (Jovito’s) homosexual orientation.”

Chapter 19 continues that “Bishop (Éamonn) Walsh told the Commission that his concern related to Fr Jovito’s paedophile orientation and not his sexuality in general.”

Recalling that August 1990 meeting last December, following publication of the Murphy report, Bishop Éamonn Walsh told this reporter: “ . . . as far back as 1990, I wasn’t a month in the job as a bishop, and I stood up at a meeting and I said that not alone should the police, who were already informed about an individual . . . but we should say where he was living and the number of his car, because I felt he was a danger”.

Still, it would be five more years before authorities in the archdiocese told gardaí about Tony Walsh’s activities (1995).

Also in attendance at that August 1990 bishops’ meeting were Archbishop Connell (retired), Bishop James Kavanagh (deceased), Bishop Dermot O’Mahony (retired), and Bishop Donal Murray (resigned).

Bishop Éamonn Walsh was appointed apostolic administrator of Ferns diocese in April 2002 on the resignation of Bishop Brendan Comiskey. He promised full co-operation with the statutory Ferns inquiry, which investigated the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations there by church and State authorities. In the subsequent Ferns report he was praised for his co-operation.

Full text of Chapter 19 of the Murphy Report

2010-12-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

Full text of Chapter 19 of the Murphy Report

PDF

Walsh a 'serial paedophile' - Martin

2010-12-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

Link
December 17, 2010

AOIFE CARR

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said former priest Tony Walsh was another Brendan Smyth who should been dealt with much earlier.

Dr Martin was speaking on RTÉ radio this afternoon. He said procrastination and negotiation were part of the climate in which paedophiles flourished.

“Tony Walsh is an example of the classic serial paedophile on the same level as Brendan Smyth. The first lesson to be learned is the only way to deal with people like him is to stop them immediately. Procrastination and negotiation are part of the climate in which such paedophiles flourish,” he said.

He described details of the Murphy report dealing with Walsh “frightening” and said he could not understand why the Church had failed to realise it was dealing with a crime.

Dr Martin added that he slept better knowing that Walsh was in prison rather than wandering the streets.

“What worries me is that two days after his ordination, an allegation came in about him. He should never have been appointed,” he said.

He criticised the clergy involved for not informing gardaí and for not doing what they promised parents who complained about Walsh they said they would do, namely to keep Walsh away from children.

He said former Dublin archbishop Desmond Connell fought very hard to remove Walsh from the priesthood, including making a direct intervention to the pope.

“It was important to give a signal that there was no room in the priesthood for people who abused children. Walsh was in complete denial. He continued, after being stripped of the priesthood, to celebrate mass, dressed in something very close to clerical robes and very nearly got elected as president of a credit union. He is a very devious man and a continued risk to children,” he said.

Connect, a telephone-based counselling and support service funded by the HSE, will be open tonight and over the weekend following today's publication.

Providing professional counselling to survivors of abuse, the service will be open from 6pm to 10pm tonight and on Saturday and Sunday evenings. Call freephone 1800 477 477 from the Republic of Ireland and 00800 477 477 77 from Northern Ireland.

What is chapter 19?

2010-12-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

Link
December 15, 2010

PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

The High Court has said the 29-page chapter 19 of the Murphy report can be published. Here's what it is expected to contain:

Most of the report was published on November 26th last year. It detailed findings of the Murphy Commission following its investigation of the handling by Catholic Church and State authorities of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the Dublin archdiocese, made between 1975 and 2004 and involving a sample of 46 priests.

Two chapters, 19 and 20, were withheld, as court proceedings were pending against two men who were the subject of each. That remains the case where chapter 20 is concerned. With the jailing of Tony Walsh last Monday, however, the way now seems clear for publication of chapter 19, and of 21 other references to Walsh in the Murphy report. “David” has spoken to the commission about his abuse by Walsh.

It is also known from the report itself that it investigated the church tribunal in Dublin that found in 1992 that Walsh should be laicised on foot of allegations of child sex abuse.

It states that “only two canonical trials took place over the 30-year period [investigated]. Both were at the instigation of [then] Archbishop Connell and the Commission gives him credit for initiating the two penal processes which led to the dismissal of Fr Bill Carney in 1990”.

The report also says: “Archbishop Connell was one of the first bishops in the world to initiate canonical trials in the modern era. He did so in relation to . . . Fr Bill Carney in 1990.” The blank in the report indicates the missing name of Tony Walsh.

Sitting on the tribunal that laicised Walsh in 1992 were three canon lawyers: the recently retired bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh; the current Bishop of Dromore, John McAreavey; and Fr Paddy Corcoran. Bishop Willie Walsh has said he understood at the time that the archdiocese had told the Garda about the tribunal findings. It had not. Neither did McAreavey, Corcoran or Bishop Éamonn Walsh, who was aware of the tribunal and its findings at the time.

Tony Walsh appealed the tribunal decision to Rome, and the ensuing process took a further three years. In 1994, as that appeal progressed, Walsh sexually assaulted the 11-year-old grandson of a man whose funeral he attended dressed as a priest. The boy’s parents contacted the Garda. Walsh received a one-year jail sentence for the offence in 1995.

By then Rome had commuted Walsh’s laicisation. He would remain a priest but spend a decade in a monastery. When Walsh was convicted in the courts Archbishop Desmond Connell flew to Rome and insisted that Walsh be laicised. He was.

Uncomfortable for Dublin and Vatican

2010-12-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

Link
December 16, 2010

ANALYSIS: THE PSEUDONYM chosen for Tony Walsh in chapter 19 of the Murphy report was “Fr Jovito”. So said Justice Paul Gilligan in the High Court yesterday.

The name’s alliterative associations with things jovial or joyful make it seem singularly inappropriate for this hip-swinging, Elvis-impersonating, frequently brutal child abuser.

Apparently, however, in line with all other pseudonyms in the Murphy report, it was chosen at random.

Like previously published chapters, chapter 19 will make for deeply uncomfortable reading for senior Catholic Church figures in Dublin who held high office at the time.

A very basic question will be posed: how could they have allowed a man they knew to have a track record as a child abuser, from his days as a seminarian at Clonliffe College in Dublin during the 1970s, go forward for ordination as a priest?

And, having done so, how could they then have allowed such a man be appointed a curate in Ballyfermot, a parish with probably the largest group of altar boys in Ireland?

How could they then too have allowed him responsibility for children’s Masses there?

Church authorities at Clonliffe and in Archbishop’s House at the time are not the only ones likely to experience acute discomfort next week as they head into Christmas.

The Vatican will hardly welcome seven paragraphs in chapter 4 of the Murphy report which deal with the canon law trial of Walsh in Dublin and his laicisation in 1992.

Four of those paragraphs deal with his appeal to Rome where his “sentence” was commuted to a decade in a monastery. During this lengthy appeal process, Walsh abused the child who would lead to his first conviction in the civil courts.

Report finds Walsh 'most notorious' child abuser

2010-12-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

Link

AOIFE CARR

The Murphy Commission has described former priest Tony Walsh, who abused hundreds of children over almost two decades, as the "most notorious child sexual abuser" to come to its attention.

Chapter 19 of the Murphy report dealing with Walsh was published today, having been withheld from publication pending the resolution of court proceedings against him.

His conviction on December 6th paved the way for the publication of the 29 pages of the report referring specifically to him. He was jailed for 16 years, with four suspended, following his conviction of the sexual abuse of three boys from Ballyfermot during the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

The report says that only two days after Walsh’s first appointment to Ballyfermot parish in 1978, a complaint was received at Archbishop’s House that he had sexually abused an eight-year-old boy.

A vicar general, Monsignor Glennon, was asked to investigate the complaint. He accepted Walsh’s denials saying “he impressed me as telling the truth”.

The matter was dropped. The Commission found this complaint was investigated in a “fairly desultory way”.

A second complaint was then made by the mother of a boy who said he was abused by Walsh in 1978 and 1979. Again, no action was taken apart from Fr Michael Cleary, who was also based in Ballyfermot at the time, visiting the boy’s house to educate him on matters of male sexuality.

The Commission found that by March 1985 at least seven priests in the Dublin archdiocese were aware of concerns about Walsh’s behaviour. Monsignor Alex Stenson, then chancellor of the archdiocese, spoke to Walsh a month later.

He “denied nothing” according to Mgr Stenson but agreed to attend a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist said he was “cautiously optimistic” a re-orientation method of treatment “channelling the drive appropriately” could be successful given the fact Walsh “had not the normal sexual outlets available to him by virtue of his priesthood”.

After a further complaint about Walsh in 1985, he was removed from Ballyfermot and appointed to Westland Row parish.

"My impression was that by moving him to Westland Row he would be in a more restricted situation insofar as he would be resident with a number of other priests," Mgr Stenson told the Commission.

The Commission found that it was difficult to understand how the seriousness of the situation was not appreciated at this stage when the archdiocese was aware of four specific complaints and a number of concerns.

“It is also difficult to conclude that the move was for any purpose other than to avoid further scandal in Ballyfermot,” it said.

The parish priest at Westland Row was not made aware of Walsh’s paedophilia.

In January 1987, the housekeeper at Westland Row said she had found condoms and syringes in Walsh’s room and said a number of boys had slept overnight in his bed. Walsh denied this.

Mgr Stenson again confronted Walsh in May 1988 after more complaints were made about him by parents. He “really opened up for the first time” according to the Monsignor and admitted being “involved” with boys in Ballyfermot over an eight year period. He said he was willing “to do whatever was required”.

In a statement at the time Walsh wrote: “I hate myself because of the hurt I have given to others but I also love myself. I know I have done more good in my 10 years of priesthood than bad”.

In May 1988, 10 years after the first complaint, the archbishop and auxiliary bishops decided to send Walsh for treatment in Stroud.

Therapists there found that “under no circumstances should he have any apostolate involving children” and recommended ongoing counselling.

On his return to Ireland he was appointed to help the chaplain in a hospital for older people. However, he began to resume his inappropriate behaviour. In August 1989, a couple complained that Walsh had abused their son at a fete in All Hallows.

He returned to Stroud where the psychiatrist who treated him said he “had made no real progress” over the four years between 1985 and 1989. He said removing Walsh from the priesthood would not solve the problem and “it might cause more problems”.

He suggested that a middle ground appointment be sought somewhere between a parish ministry and total isolation but with no involvement with children.

In April 1990, Archbishop Connell and Mgr Stenson told Walsh the only options open to him were voluntary laicisation or dismissal. His public ministry was ended but he was allowed to say Mass in private.

It was around this time the possibility of reporting Walsh to the gardaí was raised. This was not done. Instead, Walsh was given leave of absence for a year and sent to live in a rehabilitation centre outside Dublin.

By early 1991, he was back in Dublin, and more complaints began to emerge about him. At a bishops’ meeting in March of that year, it was decided to institute a penal process against him. Again the idea of getting gardaí involved was discussed but not acted on. Walsh was sent to Mellifont Abbey.

A Garda investigation began when a mother of a young boy reported Walsh for attempting to coax her son into his car.

Gardaí contacted Mellifont and were told Walsh was there because there were numerous allegations of paedophilia against him. No attempt was made by gardaí to investigate this.

In September 1991, Walsh was sent to live in the St John of God psychiatric hospital before being sent to a clinic in the UK.

Here, a remarkable tale then emerged according to the Commission. Walsh was allowed to roam the streets of a nearby city unsupervised. He dressed in priests’ robes and said Mass in local churches. He befriended a family with small children and attempted to abuse their 11-year-old son.

He was then sent back to Ireland and Mgr Stenson noted at the time: “The real problem is what do we do now?”

The process to dismiss Walsh from the clerical state began in January 1992, a full year after the decision was made to do so. He fought the process every step of the way. Complaints were received throughout 1992 from parents alleging Walsh befriended their children and behaved inappropriately.

In August 1993, Walsh was dismissed from the priesthood. He appealed that decision to Rome who upheld his appeal saying he should be reinstated provided he enter a monastery for a period of 10 years.

However, no monastery would take him. Archbishop Connell then wrote to the judicial body in Rome appealing their decision “as a matter of urgency".

In November 1995, Garda stations began collating all cases they had concerning Walsh. In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger confirmed Pope John Paul II was dismissing Walsh from the priesthood. The DPP directed Walsh be tried in relation to six complainants and he was sentenced to six years in jail.

Further complaints about Walsh continued to emerge during the late 1990s and 2000s. He has never accepted that he is no longer a priest and continues to seek ways of appealing against the Vatican's decision.

The Commission found that by the time he was transferred to Westland Row in 1986,there was an “established clear danger to children and yet their welfare simply did not arise for consideration”.

The report said Walsh was "probably the most notorious child abuser to have come to the attention of the Commission".

Its said action should have been taken by the archdiocese at a much earlier stage but the Commission said it recognised that Dr Connell did act decisively once he became Archbishop.

The report said it was “notable” how charitable the parents who complained were, saying they simply wanted to ensure other children were not abused.

It said it was unacceptable that two gardaí who had concerns about Walsh failed to pursue a thorough criminal investigation. It added that the archdiocese should have informed the gardaí of all of its concerns but did not do so.

O'Grady may face more charges

2010-12-21T15:43:00.000-08:00

Link
December 17, 2010

More charges could be brought against a defrocked priest accused of possession of thousands of pornographic images of children, a court heard today.

Defence solicitor Kieran Conway said there was consent to the case being adjourned pending directions from the DPP.

Det Gda Johanna Doyle of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation confirmed that the adjournment was for directions to be obtained and the possibility of “further charges.”

Judge Patrick McMahon remanded the defendant on continuing bail to appear again on January 28th next.

The former priest, who was wearing a green jacket, a pullover and black trousers, remained silent during his brief court appearance.

Last Saturday, the court had heard that the defendant had lived at various addresses in Ireland since he was deported from the United States, in 2001. He rents a lock-up facility and a postbox to store his personal belongings.

As part of his bail conditions he must sign on twice daily at Harcourt Terrace Garda station.

Mr O’Grady also gave an undertaking not to seek travel documentation and has surrendered his passport to gardaí.

The material allegedly confiscated included images and videos on a USB key, an external hard drive and a laptop.

Former priest Oliver O'Grady arrested for child porn

2010-12-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

Link
December 13, 2010

Convicted pedophile priest Oliver O'Grady, who served at St. Anne's Catholic Church in the 1970s, was arrested on Friday on charges of possessing thousands of pictures of child pornography, according to the Dublin Times newspaper in Ireland and Catholic canon lawyer Patrick Wall.

O'Grady was arrested at his Dublin hostel just after 7 a.m. Ireland time, the Times reported. Authorities found child pornography photos on O'Grady's laptop and a hard drive, the newspaper reported.

O'Grady, 65, was released from custody on bail that amounts to 500 euro, the equivalent of about $750, Wall said on Sunday. He is next due in court on Friday.

Oliver O'Grady previously served seven years at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione after pleading guilty to four counts of sexual abuse with children under 14 in Calaveras County while he a priest in San Andreas.

He served at St. Anne's in Lodi from 1971-78 and at parishes in Stockton, Turlock, Hughson and San Andreas from 1979 until his arrest in 1993.

O'Grady was paroled from Mule Creek in 2000 and deported to his native Ireland.

A documentary about O'Grady's life, called "Deliver Us From Evil," was released in 2006. Much of the movie involved interviews with Bob and Maria Jyono of Lodi, whose daughter was sexually abused by O'Grady. The film is available on DVD.

Since being deported to Ireland, O'Grady moved to Holland, where he volunteered at a parish and organized birthday parties at a McDonald's restaurant there, Wall said. He grew a beard and went by Brother Francis (Francis is his middle name), Wall added.

"We don't blame Oliver," Wall said. "He can't control himself. It was the people who were supposed to supervise him (we blame).

"The only reason it came out is that, like all criminals, Oliver made a mistake," Wall said. "He was coming back (to Ireland) from Holland and left his laptop on the plane."

Authorities found videos and still photos of child pornography on his computer, with victims as young as the age of 2, Wall said.

O'Grady had applied for Dutch citizenship, but he returned to Ireland after someone saw him in "Deliver Us From Evil" in Holland and reported him to police, Wall said.

'Deliver Us from Evil' priest arrested in Ireland

2010-12-14T12:05:00.001-08:00

Link
The Associated Press
Monday, December 13, 2010; 2:57 PM

LONDON -- A defrocked California priest made notorious by an award-winning documentary on sex abuse in the Catholic church has been detained by Irish authorities on child pornography charges, police said Monday.

Irish police said in a statement that Oliver O'Grady had been arrested in the Dublin area Friday morning but gave few details about the exact nature of his alleged crime. The 65-year-old was made the subject of an award-winning 2006 documentary, "Deliver Us from Evil," in which he spoke openly of abusing more than 20 children as he was shuffled from one parish to another in California through the 1970s and 80s.

Convicted in 1994 of molesting two brothers, he served almost seven years in a U.S. prison before being deported to his native Ireland.

Earlier this year the Dutch Catholic Church came under fire after it emerged that O'Grady had been working as church volunteer in the city of Rotterdam. O'Grady had been living in the country under another name, but parishioners recognized him when "Deliver Us from Evil" was aired on Dutch television in April. By that time, the disgraced cleric had already left the country.

Leaked Cables Show Vatican Tensions and Diplomacy With U.S.

2010-12-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

Link
The New York Times
By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: December 10, 2010

ROME — Recently released diplomatic cables show the Vatican fighting to shore up its eroding control over sexual abuse scandals in the United States and Ireland, highlighting complex tensions between the Vatican hierarchy, local bishops and civil authorities.

The cables were obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to The New York Times and other news organizations. They do not appear to contain any bombshells about the Vatican, but they provide a telling glimpse of how American diplomats often rely on the Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide network of prelates for intelligence.

Some cables read in part like thrillers, like when Opus Dei, the powerful religious order, took pains to distance itself from one of its members: Robert P. Hanssen, an F.B.I. agent who in a dramatic case in 2001 pleaded guilty to being a longtime Russian spy.

Others reveal some of the complex diplomacy between the United States and the Vatican during the abuse scandal that hit the United States in 2002.

A cable sent that year by the United States Embassy to the Holy See said that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Pope John Paul II’s last secretary of state, “took the bulk of his initial meeting” with Ambassador James Nicholson “to register his displeasure with the several lawsuits filed in U.S. courts that have been served at the Vatican.”

It added that Cardinal Sodano “complained about the ‘aggressive attorneys’ who had started in on the Vatican with the sexual abuse scandal and had also filed suits about Nazi-era gold allegedly acquired by the Holy See.”

“It’s one thing for them to sue bishops,” the cable quoted him as saying, “but another thing entirely to sue the Holy See.”

Cardinal Sodano urged Ambassador Nicholson to help defend the Holy See’s sovereignty.

In 2005, the State Department argued that Pope Benedict XVI should be immune from a lawsuit accusing him of conspiracy to hide abuse because he was a head of state. A federal judge later dismissed the case.

The sovereignty issue emerged again more recently in Ireland, where two government-appointed commissions released reports in 2009 revealing a widespread cover-up of abuse, shaking the Irish church to its core.

According to a cable sent in February from the American Embassy to the Holy See, requests by Irish investigators “offended” many in the Vatican “because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty.”

“Our contacts at the Vatican and in Ireland expect the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church to be protracted over several years, as only allegations from the Dublin Archdiocese have been investigated to date. Investigations of allegations from other Archdioceses will lead, officials in both states lament, to additional painful revelations,” the cable read.

It added that the Vatican had “learned some important lessons from the U.S. sex abuse scandal of 2002,” including “acting quickly to express horror at allegations, to label the alleged acts both crimes and sins, and to call in the local leaders to discuss how to prevent recurrences.”

Other cables show the Catholic Church to be deeply involved in local politics worldwide and a useful source of information for American diplomats, especially in places like Cuba and Venezuela. One cable from 2006 said that a Venezuelan clergyman might be a good source on President Hugo Chávez.

The Holy See has also had full diplomatic ties with Iran for decades. A cable briefing President Obama ahead of his meeting with Benedict at the Vatican in July 2009 said that the Holy See was “deeply concerned” about the violence during the Iranian elections the previous month.

“It has been publicly silent to date on the current crisis, in part to preserve its ability to act as an intermediary if an international crisis emerges,” the cable read, adding, “it is unclear how much clout the Vatican really has with Iran, however.”

A cable from November 2008 cited Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s longtime point person on Catholic-Jewish relations, as saying that Benedict was “not likely to move forward” with the beatification of Pius XII, who led the church during World War II, “until the Vatican finishes the process of opening its archives to outside researchers, which is expected to take several more years.”

Jewish groups have protested that Pius did not do enough to save Jews during the Holocaust and have called on the Vatican to open its archives. Last year, Benedict moved Pius one step closer to sainthood.

A 2002 cable said that “despite the real progress” under John Paul in the Vatican’s relations with Judaism, some in the hierarchy still “manifested remnants of anti-Semitic sentiments.”

It cited “an older desk officer of French origin” who complained that the United States government’s “strong interest in modern European anti-Semitism stemmed from the ‘excessive influence of Jews in your media and government,’ ” while another curial official said some lawsuits against the Holy See “were the result of ‘Jewish judges having too much influence.’ ”

In one of the most mysterious cables in the lot, in March 2001, the chancellor of the Prelature of Opus Dei, the Rev. Thomas G. Bohlin, “requested an urgent meeting” with the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy to the Holy See. “Bohlin said that Opus Dei had conducted an accounting of all financial contributions” made by Mr. Hanssen, then accused and later convicted of spying for Russia.

Father Bohlin “claimed that Hanssen contributed $4,000 through 1992 and made no contributions after 1992” and added that when arrested he was still “a member in good standing.”

“Request for urgent meeting struck post as unusual. This is the first time Opus Dei has officially asked for a meeting,” the cable continued. “It appears that Opus Dei is attempting to preempt any charges that it profited financially from alleged activities of Hanssen.”

A version of this article appeared in print on December 11, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.

Factbox: European Catholic sex abuse cases in 2010

2010-12-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Link
Europe on msnbc.com
December 9, 2010

A report into sexual abuse of Dutch minors by Roman Catholic priests showed the Netherlands ranked second only to Ireland in the known extent of the scandals rocking the Church in Europe.

Here are some details of the major developments in the Roman Catholic Church scandals in Europe this year.

* AUSTRIA:

-- Aug 10 - A record 100,000 Austrians expected to leave the Catholic Church in 2010 because of sexual abuse scandals rocking the Church in Europe, a newspaper reports.

-- June 28 - Pope Benedict rebukes Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn for accusing a senior Vatican official, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, of covering up sexual abuse cases.

* BELGIUM:

-- Sept 10 - Widespread child sexual abuse in Belgian Church drove at least 13 victims to suicide, a Church commission reports. Of the 475 cases it recorded, two-thirds of the victims were male, with boys aged about 12 most vulnerable.

-- Sept 8 - Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who stepped down as Brussels archbishop in January, admits he made mistakes dealing with abuse cases. He came under heavy criticism after a tape of him urging a victim to keep quiet was published.

-- June 24 - Police raid Church offices and Danneels's flat and confiscate files and computers from panel probing abuse cases. The raid occurs during meeting of country's bishops, who are held by police for nine hours. The Vatican sharply criticizes Belgian authorities for the raids.

-- April 23 - Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe resigns and goes into hiding after admitting he had sexually abused his own nephew for years.

* BRITAIN:

-- Sept 18 - Pope Benedict makes one of his strongest apologies to abuse victims while on state visit to Britain, expressing his deep sorrow to innocent victims of "these unspeakable crimes."

-- April 22 - Bishops in England and Wales apologize for abuse cases worldwide, saying "terrible crimes" had been committed and Church response has been mostly inadequate. The local Church had a series of scandals about a decade ago but introduced reforms since then.

* GERMANY:

-- Dec 3 - Munich archdiocese inquiry reports that at least 159 priests were involved in or suspected of sexual abuse cases from 1945 to 2009 and 26 had been tried and found guilty. It says there were probably more cases that had been hushed up or whose files had been destroyed.

-- Sept 23 - Catholic bishops agree to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse.

-- Aug 31 - The German Church unveils new, tougher guidelines on dealing with sexual abuse of minors, obliging church authorities to report suspected cases to police.

-- June 24 - Former Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa gives up his fight to be reinstated after resigning in April amid allegations of physical abuse of minors, homosexual advances to seminarians and misusing Church funds. Mixa accuses fellow bishops of tricking the Vatican into accepting his initial resignation.

-- May 27 - Jesuit investigation cites 205 allegations of sexual abuse against priests at Jesuit schools in Germany, revealing decades of systematic abuse and cover-ups by the order.

-- April 12 - Church report says hundreds of minors were physically abused and some sexually abused at Ettal monastery school in Bavaria over several decades up until about 1990.

-- March 17 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel demands "truth and clarity" about clerical sexual abuse but says any official inquiry should not be limited to the Catholic Church.

-- March 12 - Munich archdiocese says Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and archbishop of the Bavarian city, approved therapy for pedophile priest but did not know he was later transferred to parishes where he continued to sexually abuse minors. U.S. media report on the case says the future pope must have known these details about the case.

-- March 9 - Pope Benedict's priest brother Georg admits to administering corporal punishment to members of his boys choir in Regensburg but denies this was physical abuse.

-- Feb 2 - The Jesuit order reports 25 cases of sexual abuse of pupils by priests at three boarding schools between 1975 and 1984, with most cases in Berlin.

* IRELAND:

-- May 31 - The Vatican names two cardinals and three archbishops from England, the United States and Canada to lead its inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in Ireland.

-- March 24 - Pope Benedict accepts the resignation of Bishop John Magee of Cloyne, accused of mishandling reports of sexual abuse in his diocese. He later accepts the resignation of two other Irish bishops.

-- March 20 - In rare letter to Ireland's Catholics, the pope tells abuse victims he felt "shame and remorse" over the scandals and announces an official Vatican probe of Irish dioceses, seminaries and religious orders.

-- Feb 16 - Pope Benedict holds crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican after two government-commissioned reports in 2009 exposed widespread physical and sexual abuse of minors in Church-run institutions and systematic cover-ups by the local hierarchy of abuse by priests.

* ITALY:

-- Feb 18 - Italy has had dozens of cases of clerical sexual abuse involving about 80 priests over the past decade, a priest who runs an anti-pedophilia organization tells Vatican Radio.

* MALTA:

-- April 18 - Pope Benedict prays and cries with eight Maltese sexual abuse victims during his first meeting with victims in Europe.

* NETHERLANDS

-- Dec 9 - A Church-commissioned report said 1,975 people had declared themselves victims of sexual and physical abuse while minors in the care of the Dutch Church and criticized the Church for not responding to the scandals more promptly.

-- Nov 26 - The Salesian order of priests admitted to paying 16,000 euros in hush money in 2003 to a victim of sexual abuse by seven priests between 1948 to 1953.

-- April 16 - The Rotterdam diocese reported a Dutch priest to the police for alleged sexual abuse and barred him from ministry, making him the fourth to be suspended this year.

-- March 9 - The Dutch Church launched an independent commission to study reports of alleged sexual abuses by priests.

-- March 2 - Dozens of Dutch Catholics have come forward to report sexual abuses by priests, encouraged by media reports about abuse by priests from the Salesian order decades ago.

*NORWAY:

-- April 9 - The Church in Norway reported four cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests and revealed that a bishop who resigned in 2009 did so after abusing an altar boy.

* SWITZERLAND:

-- June 2 - Swiss bishops say they received reports between January and May of 72 perpetrators abusing 104 victims, up from 14 perpetrators and 15 victims in 2009.

Sources: Reuters, Munich archdiocese

WikiLeaks: Sex abuse scandal left rift in Vatican-Ireland relations

2010-12-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

LinkWritten by Rob on 11 December 2010
Conservative American News

Relations between the Vatican and Ireland deteriorated sharply as the Holy See appeared to ignore a commission looking into complaints of physical and sexual abuse of children by Irish priests, according to U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. One cable from earlier this year says the Vatican was angered by the way the Murphy Commission — which was looking into the how complaints of abuse had been handled by the Church and Irish government — sidestepped normal diplomatic channels. The commission had written directly to the Vatican to seek information and requested a meeting with the Vatican's representative in Ireland….

Vatican refused to help Irish sex abuse probe: US cable Read more: Vatican refused to help Irish sex abuse probe: US cable - The Times of India http:

2010-12-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

Link
December 11, 2010

LONDON: The Vatican refused to cooperate with an Irish probe into child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Dublin because the requests were not made through official channels, a leaked US cable showed Saturday.

Requests for information by the 2009 Murphy commission "offended many in the Vatican... because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty", according to a cable from the US embassy in Rome, leaked by WikiLeaks.

The Murphy commission's findings, published in November 2009, caused shock across Ireland and the worldwide Catholic community by detailing how Church authorities covered up for paedophile priests in Dublin for three decades.

Dated February 26 this year, the US cable -- published by The Guardian newspaper -- records the observations of US diplomat in Rome Julieta Noyes.

It says the commission, which was led by judge Yvonne Murphy, wrote directly to Vatican officials to ask for information on its investigations, sidestepping official diplomatic channels.

"While Vatican contacts immediately expressed deep sympathy for the victims and insisted that the first priority was preventing a recurrence, they also were angered by how the situation played out politically," the cable said.

"The Murphy Commission's requests offended many in the Vatican, the Holy See's Assessor Peter Wells... told DCM (Noyes), because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty.

"Vatican officials were also angered that the government of Ireland did not step in to direct the Murphy Commission to follow standard procedures in communications with Vatican City.

"Adding insult to injury, Vatican officials also believed some Irish opposition politicians were making political hay with the situation by calling publicly on the government to demand that the Vatican reply."

Ultimately, the Vatican secretary of state -- the equivalent of a prime minister -- Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, wrote to the Irish embassy and ordered that any further requests go through diplomatic channels.

Ireland's ambassador to the Vatican, Noel Fahey, told Noyes the situation "was the most difficult crisis he had ever managed", according to the cable.

In the end Dublin did not press the Vatican to reply to the Murphy panel's requests, Fahey's deputy Helena Keleher told Noyes.

Keleher also said foreign ambassadors were not required or expected to appear before such bodies.

"Nevertheless, Keleher thought the (Vatican) Nuncio in Ireland made things worse by simply ignoring the requests," the cable said, noting that the Vatican's response only fuelled anger in Ireland over the sex abuse scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI met with Ireland's two most senior Catholic churchmen after the publication of the Murphy report, and said he shared "the outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by Irish Catholics over its findings.

Read more: Vatican refused to help Irish sex abuse probe: US cable - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Vatican-refused-to-help-Irish-sex-abuse-probe-US-cable/articleshow/7081443.cms#ixzz17pP5kfOb

US embassy cables: Vatican used sovereign status in face of Irish child abuse investigation

2010-12-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

Link
(AP) – December 12, 2010

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables indicate that the Vatican felt "offended" that Ireland failed to respect Holy See "sovereignty" by asking high-ranking churchmen to answer questions from an Irish government commission probing decades of sex abuse of minors by clergy.

That the Holy See used its diplomatic immunity status as a tiny-city state to try to thwart Ireland's government-led probe has long been known. But the WikiLeaks cables, published by Britain's The Guardian newspaper on Saturday, contain delicate, behind-the-scenes diplomatic assessments of the highly charged situation.

The Vatican press office declined to comment on the content of the cables Saturday, but decried the leaks as a matter of "extreme seriousness."

The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See also condemned the leaks and said in a statement that the Vatican and America cooperate in promoting universal values.

According to the deputy to the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, the Irish government gave in to Vatican pressure and allowed the church officials to avoid answering questions from the inquiry panel, according to one of the cables from a U.S. diplomat.

Ambassador Noel Fahey apparently told U.S. diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the sex abuse scandal was a tricky one to manage.

"The Vatican believes the Irish government failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations," read the cable from Noyes, deputy chief of mission.

Elsewhere in the cable the diplomat, citing a Holy See official, wrote that the inquiry commission's requests "offended many in the Vatican" because they were viewed as "an affront to Vatican sovereignty."

The diplomat also said that "adding insult to injury, Vatican officials also believed some Irish opposition politicians were making political hay with the situation by publicly calling on the government to demand that the Vatican reply."

The Irish government wanted to be seen as cooperating with the investigation because its own education department was implicated in decades of abuse, but politicians were reluctant to insist Vatican officials answer the investigators' questions, the cables indicate.

One cable discloses the behind-the-scenes diplomatic maneuvers by which Irish politicians tried to persuade the Vatican to cooperate with the probe.

"In the end the Irish government decided not to press the Vatican reply," the U.S. diplomat wrote, citing Fahey's deputy, Helena Keleher.

Saturday's official Vatican press statement said the WikiLeaks cables "reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself." It added that the reports "reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence."

The cables also contain information regarding the Vatican's relations with the Anglican Communion, which includes the Church of England and its affiliates in more than 160 countries.

One cable reports that Britain's ambassador to the Vatican warned that the pope's invitation to disaffected Anglicans to join the Catholic church had chilled relations between the two churches and risked inciting a violent backlash against British Catholics.

A November 2009 file from U.S. Embassy at the Vatican quotes British envoy Francis Campbell as saying that "Anglican-Vatican relations were facing their worst crisis in 150 years as a result of the pope's decision."

The Vatican moved last year to make it easier for traditional Anglicans upset over the appointment of female priests and gay bishops to join the Catholic Church, whose teaching holds that homosexual activity is sinful.

The pope invited Anglicans to join new "personal ordinariates," which allow them to continue to use some of their traditional liturgy and be served by married priests.

A cable quotes Campbell as saying the move put the Anglican spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, "in an impossible situation." And he worried that the crisis could aggravate "latent anti-Catholicism" in majority-Protestant England.

"The outcome could be discrimination or in isolated cases, even violence, against this minority," the cable said.

AP writer Jill Lawless contributed from London.

Leaked cables show Ireland caved in to Vatican pressure in clergy sex abuse probe

2010-12-11T09:01:00.000-08:00

Link
December 11, 2010

VATICAN CITY - Newly released U.S. diplomatic cables indicate that Ireland caved in to Vatican pressure to grant immunity to church officials in the government probe of decades of sex abuse by Irish clergy in the predominantly Catholic nation.

The Vatican press office declined to comment on the content of the cables Saturday, but decried the leaks as a matter of "extreme gravity."

The U.S. ambassador to the Holy See also condemned the leaks and said in a statement that the Vatican and American co-operate in promoting universal values.

According to the deputy to the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, the Irish government gave in to Vatican pressure and granted church officials immunity in exchange for testifying, according to one of the cables from a U.S. diplomat.

Ambassador Noel Fahey apparently told U.S. diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the sex abuse scandal was a tricky one to manage.

The Irish government wanted to be seen as co-operating with the investigation because its own education department was implicated in decades of abuse, but politicians were reluctant to insist Vatican officials answer the investigators' questions, the cables indicate.

One cable discloses the behind-the-scenes diplomatic manoeuvrs during which Irish politicians tried to persuade the Vatican to co-operate with the probe.

Saturday's Vatican press official statement said the WikiLeaks cables should be evaluated with "reservations" and "prudence," and not be taken as an "expression" of the Holy See.

The cables also contain information regarding the Vatican's relations with the Anglican Communion, which includes the Church of England and its affiliates in more than 160 countries.

The pope invited Anglicans to join new "personal ordinariates," which allow them to continue to use some of their traditional liturgy and be served by married priests.

"The outcome could be discrimination or in isolated cases, even violence, against this minority," the cable said.

WikiLeaks cables: Vatican refused to engage with child sex abuse inquiry

2010-12-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

Link
December 11, 2010

A WikiLeaks cable details the behind-the-scenes diplomacy before Cardinal Seán Brady met Pope Benedict XVI in Rome, after which the pope said he shared the 'outrage, betrayal and shame' of Irish Catholics. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters

The Vatican refused to allow its officials to testify before an Irish commission investigating the clerical abuse of children and was angered when they were summoned from Rome, US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks reveal.

Requests for information from the 2009 Murphy commission into sexual and physical abuse by clergy "offended many in the Vatican" who felt that the Irish government had "failed to respect and protect Vatican sovereignty during the investigations", a cable says.

Despite the lack of co-operation from the Vatican, the commission was able to substantiate many of the claims and concluded that some bishops had tried to cover up abuse, putting the interests of the Catholic church ahead of those of the victims. Its report identified 320 people who complained of child sexual abuse between 1975 and 2004 in the Dublin archdiocese.

A cable entitled "Sex abuse scandal strains Irish-Vatican relations, shakes up Irish church, and poses challenges for the Holy See" claimed that Vatican officials also believed Irish opposition politicians were "making political hay" from the situation by publicly urging the government to demand a reply from the Vatican.

Ultimately, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (equivalent to a prime minister), wrote to the Irish embassy, ordering that any requests related to the investigation must come through diplomatic channels.

In the cable Noel Fahey, the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, told the US diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the Irish clergy sex abuse scandal was the most difficult crisis he had ever managed.

The Irish government wanted "to be seen as co-operating with the investigation" because its own education department was implicated, but politicians were reluctant to press Vatican officials to answer the investigators' queries.

According to Fahey's deputy, Helena Keleher, the government acceded to Vatican pressure and granted them immunity from testifying. Officials understood that "foreign ambassadors are not required or expected to appear before national commissions", but Keleher's opinion was that by ignoring the commission's requests the clergy had made the situation worse.

The cable reveals the behind-the-scenes diplomacy in which politicians in the Irish government attempted to persuade an imperious Vatican to engage with the investigation.

The foreign minister, Michael Martin, "was forced to call in the papal nuncio (representative)" to discuss the situation. The ambassador reported that resentment towards the church in Rome remained very high in Ireland, largely because of the institutionalised cover-up of abuse by the Catholic church hierarchy.

Ferns Report highlights 100 cases

2010-12-01T19:07:00.000-08:00

Link

The report of the Ferns Inquiry says that it identified more than 100 allegations of child sexual abuse, made between 1962 and 2002, against 21 priests.

Six of the priests had died before any allegations of abuse were made against them.

The report concludes that 'both Bishop Herlihy and Bishop Comiskey placed the interests of individual priests ahead of those of the community in which they served'.

It says the nature of the response by the Church authorities in the Diocese of Ferns to allegations of child sexual abuse by priests operating under the ageis of that diocese has varied over the past 40 years.

The report says the variations reflect in part the growing understanding by doctors and society generally of the nature and the consequences of child sexual abuse and in part the different personalities and management styles of successive bishops.

Bishop Donal Herlihy

The report says that between 1960 and 1980, it would appear that Bishop Donal Herlihy treated child sexual abuse by priests of his diocese exclusively as a moral problem.

He penalised the priest against whom the allegation was made by transferring him to a different post or different diocese for a time, but then returned him to his former position.

It says that by 1980, Bishop Herlihy recognised that there was a psychological or medical dimension to the issue of child sexual abuse.

His decision in 1980 to send priests in respect of whom allegations of abuse were made to a psychologist was 'appropriate'.

But 'what was wholly inappropriate and totally inexplicable' was the decision to appoint to curacies priests against whom allegations had been made and in respect of whom a respected clerical psychologist had expressed his concerns in unambiguous terms as to their suitability to interact with young people.

The report criticises Bishop Herlihy's decision to ordain 'clearly unsuitable men' into the priesthood when he knew or ought to have known that they had a propensity to abuse children.

It says that where a credible allegation of child sexual abuse is made against an employee, it is the responsibility of the employer or superior to require the employee to step aside promptly from any post or position in which he has access to children.

Bishop Brendan Comiskey

In the case of Bishop Brendan Comiskey, the report says that 'in almost every case significant periods elapsed' before the Bishop could persuade the priest in question to vacate his position and undergo assessment and treatment.

The report says that in no case did Bishop Comiskey persuade or compel the priest concerned to stand aside from his priestly ministry.

Bishop Eamonn Walsh

In relation to Bishop Eamonn Walsh, who took over as administrator of the diocese in 2002, the report says the current practice of the diocese operates to a very high level of child protection but 'the regret is that this was not achieved earlier'.

In April 2002, eleven priests against whom allegations of sexual abuse had been made were still alive.

Three have been excluded from the priesthood by the Holy See. Seven have stood aside from active ministry at the request of Bishop Walsh. The eighth priest is in retirement.

The gardaí are advised from time to time where these priests are and are satisfied that arrangements put in place provide appropriate child protection.

The report says it has no evidence to suggest that there was a paedophile ring in operation in the Diocese of Ferns, or within any clerical institution.

Garda criticised

Garda handling of complaints of abuse have been strongly criticised in the Ferns Report.

It says formal complaints of sexual abuse were made against eight priests to the gardaí but the garda authorities' handling of one of these complaints was 'wholly inadequate'. The handling of the other cases was satisfactory.

Evidence given to the inquiry of some complaints made to gardaí before 1988 do not appear to have been recorded in any garda file and were not investigated in an appropriate manner.

The report says that this unsatisfactory approach may have been due to the reluctance of the complainant to pursue their complaint or reluctance on the part of members of the gardaí to investigate allegations against members of the Catholic clergy.

The report says that evidence before 1998 is insufficient to enable the inquiry to reach any firm view.

Health authorities

The report highlights the lack of statutory powers enabiling the health authorities at the time to fully protect children from abuse.

It says all health boards have a wide range of powers to promote the welfare of children in their area but few, if any, statutory powers to achieve that where the welfare of a child is endangered by abuse from a person outside the family circle.

In the absence of these powers, there was 'no significant response' available to the South Eastern Health Board to the allegations of abuse that they were aware of.

The report also expresses concern that the health board and other authorities were unaware of the very limited powers available to them to intervene to protect the children

Failures at St Peter's College

The Ferns Inquiry also highlighted major failures in St Peter's College where all the priests investigated by the inquiry were ordained.

Over a random five-year period selected by the inquiry, ten priests who were in St Peter's have come to the attention of the inquiry over allegations of child sexual abuse.

Fr Donal Collins who was a teacher and then a principal, consistently abused boys over a 21-period, it says.

A member of a religious order, who spoke to the inquiry, recalled a high level of sexual activity in the college but did not recall child sexual abuse as being a problem.

The 271-page report by Justice Frank Murphy was presented to the Cabinet this morning.

The report will not be published on the Internet because of legal advice.

More Irish Christian Brothers abuses from around the world

2010-11-25T10:01:00.000-08:00

Quite exceptional depravity -- Brothers
Senate Committee, Canberra, part of "Lost Innocents: Righting the Record," August 2001

The Christian Brothers: Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun

4.2 The accounts of sexual abuse and assault at these four institutions are horrendous, supporting and amplifying the UK Committee's description of 'quite exceptional depravity'. The stories from the ex-residents of Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf, and Tardun [all in Western Australia] provide an account of systemic criminal sexual assault and predatory behaviour by a large number of the Brothers over a considerable period of time. Evidence was given of boys being abused in many ways for the sexual gratification of the Brothers, of boys being terrified in bed at night as Brothers stalked the dormitories to come and take children to their rooms, of boys as 'pets' of the Brothers being repeatedly sodomised, and of boys being pressured into bestial acts.

4.3 The Committee received evidence that boys who reported abuse or assault were beaten by the Brothers or abused by the very Brother to whom they had complained. Some boys ran away to escape the abuse, but when caught, police or lay people did not believe them - usually due to the aura of the cloth. While not being believed was a terrible experience, even worse for the children was when they were believed and still sent back to the institution and the matter was covered-up.

In Western Australia it was most likely that the strong connections between the Christian Brothers run institutions and the police with links to the Knights of the Southern Cross (as discussed in chapter 2) meant that there was 'a closed system' with little likelihood of such complaints being either believed or examined. For many abused children there was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness with nobody they could turn to.

4.4 Sexual abuse and assault of children within these institutions was referred to by Dr Coldrey in The Scheme, his history of the Christian Brothers in Western Australia. In the book he wrote that 'there is very strong evidence that five Brothers were multiple offenders', though they were not named and four were dead. He also referred to six Brothers who admitted an offence with a teenage boy. When the book was published in 1993 it was strongly criticised by many former child migrants as a 'whitewash'.

4.5 However, Dr Coldrey understood that the level and extent of sexual abuse by Brothers was on a much larger scale. He subsequently expanded his account in a monograph Reaping the Whirlwind: A Secret Report for the Executive of the Christian Brothers - Sexual Abuse from 1930 to 1994. Extracts from this document were read in the New South Wales Supreme Court in December 1994 during the case that had been brought against the Christian Brothers. The reports of these extracts appear to be all that exists in public of this document, as even Dr Coldrey has indicated that he does not have a copy now and that it 'seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth'.

4.6 The most serious revelations from the document concerned the existence of 'sex rings' at Bindoon and Castledare. It is reported that in A Secret Report Dr Coldrey wrote:

What I mean by the term 'sex underworld' or 'sex ring' in the province is that monks doing the wrong thing with boys...are collaborating with one another in their activities. They know one another are acting against the rule and assist and cover for each other. In the orphanages they may have shared the same boys... __________ Read more:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/clac_ctte/child_migrat/c04.doc

Paedophile brothers would tell other brothers which boys were vulnerable - they would share information - if one boy complained to one brother about the sexual abuse of another brother, he would be silenced or intimidated - and it went on more or less as a conspiracy and this conspiracy has been detailed - it is very clear that these complaints went as far as the Archbishop's office.

4.7 The research and publication of material by Dr Coldrey exposing the predatory sexual activities of members of the Catholic Church apparently made the Church hierarchy so uncomfortable that he was pressured from the highest levels - Rome - to remove material from the Internet and cease the publication of reports on the subject.

4.8 Brothers who sexually abused migrant children have been named in previously published books and material. The names recurred in the submissions and evidence before the Committee. To date only Brothers Philip Carmody (1920), Gerard Dick (1994) and Fabian Jordan have been before the courts and successfully prosecuted. Most of the other named Brothers have since died either during or before prosecution could be launched. Brothers 'Pop' Angus, Col Beeden, Doug Boulter, Con Campbell, Serenus Cooke, Matt Dawe, C Fricker, Hubert Hansen, Sal Marques, LH Murphy, C O'Neill, BS Smith, and Matt Thyer have also been accused with a 'good deal of precision and accuracy' as perpetrators of sexual abuse and assault. Others named by a number of witnesses were Brothers Bruno Doyle, FP Keaney, PC Mohen and GP Moore.

4.9 The Christian Brothers were 'very insistent that the abuses were not known to those who controlled the institutions' when they appeared before the UK Health Committee. This claim was moderated in the Catholic Church Joint Liaison Group's submission to the Committee by stating that 'we are now also aware that in some cases...sexual abuse occurred...It seems that these abuses did not come to the notice of the supervising authorities, be they congregational, diocesan, federal or state'. Yet reference is made in The Scheme, using the Church's own records, of knowledge by the Brothers' Executive in Melbourne, Provincials and Superiors.

4.10 The Committee considers that, based on the personal testimonies given in evidence and like the UK Health Committee, it cannot accept this argument. Evidence is available to warrant further criminal investigation and action. The Committee discusses previous court actions and the impact that the Statute of Limitations has in undertaking legal action in each Australian jurisdiction later in the report.

Other Institutions

4.11 The incidents of sexual abuse or assault of children in care at other institutions described in submissions covered a range of other Catholic and non-Catholic institutions. The major difference in the nature of the abuse, compared to the four Western Australian Christian Brothers' institutions, was the lack of systemic abuse perpetrated by a number of carers at the same institution. In nearly all the descriptions provided to the Committee, the abuse or assault was mostly by a single perpetrator or was a single incident.

Redress for Magdalene survivors overdue

2010-11-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Link
Independent.ie
Thursday March 25 2010

Does Brian Cowen believe that women deserved the treatment they endured in the nation's Magdalene laundries? Does he really think there is nothing to apologise for? Or, does he simply not care?

Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) -- a survivor advocacy group -- questions Mr Cowen's political leadership on this issue. Nine months have elapsed since we first circulated draft language toward a distinct redress scheme. We also called for an official apology.

Later today, our group will meet with the Health Minister. We will ask Mary Harney to acknowledge the policy whereby women giving birth to a second "illegitimate" child in a state licensed mother-and-baby home were transferred to the laundries.

Likewise, we will seek explanation of capitation grants paid by the old health boards for "problem girls" sent to institutions.

As a result of previous meetings, the Department of Justice acknowledges that women were placed 'on remand' at the Sean MacDermott Street laundry.

The Department of Education acknowledges that children were confined in the laundries as late as 1970. JFM contends that the department failed in its constitutional obligations to protect all children in these institutions.

"A collar will protect no criminal." That was Justice Minister Dermot Ahern's media sound-bite the day his department published the Murphy report. And still there is little appetite to call the four religious congregations that operated the laundries to account.

The nuns refuse to release records for women entering the laundries after January 1, 1900. Consequently, there are no answers to key questions, such as how many women entered the laundries, why did they go there, how long did they stay, what became of their children, how many died behind convent walls, and where are these women buried?

It is precisely this lack of documentation that empowers the State to ignore Magdalene survivors' calls for redress. These women deserve to be treated with respect. No one has apologised to Ireland's Magdalene women; no one has owned up to the fact that what happened to them was wrong.

James M Smith
English Department and Irish Studies Programme,
Boston College

Irish Independent

Call for Magdalene survivors redress

2010-11-25T09:33:00.000-08:00

Link
ELAINE EDWARDS
October 8, 2010
irishtimes.com

Two advocacy groups have called on the State to issue a formal apology and to establish a redress scheme for survivors of the Magdalene Laundries.

The Adoption Rights Alliance and the Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) group said they wished to highlight the “unacceptable lack of response from both church and State in facing up to Ireland’s dark past in its treatment of vulnerable women incarcerated in Magdalene Laundries” and mother-and-baby homes.

The identities, history and heritage of their children were also taken away through the closed, secret adoption practices run by the Catholic Church, the groups said.

Director of JFM Mari Steed was in Dublin to participate in an RTÉ documentary about vaccine trials conducted on infants in those mother and baby homes without their mothers’ consent.

Ms Steed was born at the Bessboro mother-and-baby home in Cork in 1960 and sent to the United States for adoption in December 1961.

She was one of the more than 200 children involved in the vaccine trials conducted by then Burroughs Wellcome (now Glaxo SmithKline).

Ms Steed, the daughter of a Magdalene survivor, was one of more than 2,000 children secretly sent to the United States from Ireland for adoption.

She said she found the ethics of the vaccine trials “absolutely abhorrent”.

As well as the fact the women in the Magdalene homes were neither told about the trials nor asked for their consent, there had been no medical follow-up to check for after-effects.

Ms Steed said she had a “very happy” adoptive upbringing but had become curious and had sought to trace her blood mother in the early 1990s.

She had met with “harassment”, “lies” and “a road block” at every stage, she said. She was reunited with her birth mother in 2001.

Susan Lohan of the Adoption Rights Alliance called for changes to the closed, sealed adoption process used here. Ms Lohan said this would not be addressed by the Adoption Bill, which is due to be passed into law shortly.

Ms Lohan said the Adoption Board was a “moribund” organisation, with no representation from adopted people on its board.

Claire McGettrick of the Justice for Magdalenes and Adoption Rights Alliance criticised the “stonewalling” by the Church and State in relation to the Magdalenes redress issue.

She said the Conference of Religious in Ireland had declined to meet the groups.

Call for full Magdalene inquiry

2010-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

Link
PATSY MCGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
November 9, 2010

IHRC commissioner Olive Braiden addresses a press conference in Dublin today to launch a call for a statutory enquiry on the Magdalene laundries. Photograph: Cyril Byrne/The Irish Times

The Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has called on the Government to immediately establish a statutory inquiry into the treatment of women and girls in Magdalene laundries.

At a press conference in Dublin this morning, it also said appropriate financial redress should be made available to survivors.

In a statement this afternoon, the Government said it regretted that relevant departments were not offered an opportunity by the commissions to contribute to its “considerations of this matter to facilitate a fully balanced evaluation of all the facts”.

The Government was “conscious that the Magdalene laundries were run by a number of religious congregations” and noted the IHRC would not conduct an inquiry itself.

Possibly anticipating this question, commission chief executive Éamonn Mac Aodha said at the press conference that an inquiry by it could not deliver the apology and redress sought from the State for the women and girls involved. “We do not have those type of powers,” he said.

The Government said it has asked the Attorney General and relevant Departments to consider the IHRC's report.

Last June, the Justice for Magdalenes group (JFM) asked the commission to conduct an inquiry into the treatment of women and girls in Magdalen laundries. The commission agreed to the request and said it would examine the human rights issues arising from its investigation.

The principle findings from the commission was that there was clear State involvement in the cases of girls and women who were sent to the Magdalen laundries following a court process.

It found that questions arose as to whether the State’s obligations "to guard against arbitrary detention were met in the absence of information on whether and how girls and women under court processes resided in and left the laundries”.

It also found that the State may have breached its obligations on forced or compulsory labour under the 1930 Forced Labour Convention “in not suppressing/outlawing the practice in laundries and in actually engaging in trade with the convents running the laundries for goods produced as a result of forced labour”.

It also found that the State may have breached its obligations “to ensure that no one is held in servitude insofar as some women and girls in the laundries may have been held in conditions of servitude after the State assumed obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.”

“We are dealing with a small and vulnerable group of women who the Government admitted as far back as 2001 were victims of abuse, but who have received no proper recognition for the hurt they experienced and continue to experience,” IHRC Commissioner Olive Braiden said. "They were omitted from the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme based on the argument that there was no State responsibility, although it is clear that the State and Irish society in general bears responsibility for the way they were treated."

Commission president Dr Maurice Manning said the State cannot abdicate from its responsibilities in relation to the treatment of women and girls in the laundries. “To vindicate the human rights of the women concerned, the Government must immediately establish a statutory inquiry mechanism to gather the evidence necessary to establish the facts behind the treatment of these women,” he said.

The Justice for Magdalenes group welcomed the report's findings and recommendations.

Spokesman Prof James Smith spoke of survivors of the laundries as an ageing and vulnerable population at home and abroad.

“The time to act is now,” he said. “The Government must move beyond its ‘deny ‘til they die’ policy. Only then will it disprove one Magdalene survivor’s telling observation: ‘they’re hoping that in 10 years we’ll all be under the sod and they can relax’.”

JFM has written to the four religious congregations which operated the Magdalene laundries three times in the past year. To date, none of the congregations has indicated a willingness to meet the group.

Priest accused of sexual abuse of two boys

2010-10-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

Link
RTE News Ireland
Thursday, 21 October 2010

A 52-year-old Catholic priest has appeared in court in Belfast accused of sexually abusing two boys.

1 of 1

A 52-year-old Catholic priest has appeared in court in Belfast accused of sexually abusing two boys.

James Martin Donaghy is denying 13 charges of indecent assault, and one of common assault.

The offences in relation to one victim are alleged to have occurred on dates between June and August 1983, while the other alleged indecent behaviour took place on dates between May 1994 and December 2001.

The priest from Lisburn in Co Antrim stepped down from his ministry at a church in Ballyholme in Co Down in March 2004 after allegations by two individuals emerged.

Lawyers for the defence and prosecution told the court there would be numerous applications to be dealt with before the trial date in January of next year.

McCourt willing to meet senior clergy

2010-10-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

Link
October 7, 2010

Jon McCourt, a Derry man who survived abuse at Termonbacca Children's Home in the 1950s, has said he would be willing to meet senior clergy appointed by the Pope to visit Ireland to investigate allegations of child abuse.

Speaking in Belfast at a conference organised by Amnesty International, Mr McCourt said he had concerns about reports that a representative from the Irish Bishops' Conference had been sent to Rome to try to limit the extent of the brief of the inquiry.

He added that the Catholic Church also had a responsibility towards the victims of clerical child abuse in Northern Ireland.

Mr McCourt said an independent legal inquiry should be established to investigate the manner in which the Church and its institutions handled allegations of clerical child abuse.

Campaigners say state authorities in Northern Ireland have a responsibility to provide redress to the victims of abuse.

The Stormont Executive is currently considering the need to set up an independent inquiry into historical institutional and clerical abuse.

Survivors are calling for an announcement to be made before Christmas.

Survivors are also seeking an apology from the First and Deputy First Ministers on behalf of the Northern Ireland state.

Priest forced siblings to abuse each other

2010-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

www.clericalwhispers.blogspot.com

Link

09/07/2010

DEFROCKED Irish paedophile priest Oliver O'Grady forced a brother and a sister to perform sex acts on each other after he raped and sexually assaulted them in California over a number of years, the Sunday Tribune can reveal.

The brother and sister, who were aged seven and eight respectively when O'Grady began to abuse them in Presentation parish in California in the mid '80s, were awarded $2m (€1.5m) in compensation in recent weeks.

The diocese of Stockton in California settled the case after a number of pre-trial hearings. In total, it is estimated that the diocese of Stockton has paid out over $30m (€23.3m) to victims of the convicted sex abuser.

Attorney Anthony De Marco, at the law firm Kiesel Boucher Larson in LA, took the civil action on behalf of the siblings.

"The abuse was as awful as you can imagine. O'Grady used to go into their classroom and take them out of class; they attended a Catholic elementary school. It was attached to a church and he would take them into the church to abuse them. He would abuse them in front of each other.

He forced one child to watch while he abused the other. He even made them do things to each other. He coerced them to abuse each other," De Marco told the Sunday Tribune.

"The abuse went on for a few years. He also abused them in their family home. It was rape and sexual assault in both cases. The abuse was horrific. They are coping as best they can, they have obviously had a lot of therapy. I think coming forward helped them and getting resolution is helping towards their healing. But nothing will take away the images in their minds. I have dealt with over 400 victims of sexual abuse in southern California and come across some truly horrific offenders. But when I read the Oliver O'Grady file, the level of callousness and disregard for children appalled me."

O'Grady was deported to Ireland in 2000 after spending seven years in prison in the US for sexually abusing two boys. He still lives here.

He has admitted to sexually abusing many children in depositions, but has only been convicted for abuse against two boys.

Dozens of victims of the former cleric have since come forward.

The former priest obtained notoriety when he agreed to feature in a documentary discussing his sexual abuse of children.

Deliver Us From Evil, which was nominated for an Oscar, was released in 2006 and many of O'Grady's victims also featured in it, discussing the impact his abuse has had on their lives.

The documentary also explored how high-ranking clergy in California moved O'Grady from one parish to another over several years when allegations of sexual abuse began to emerge.

Priest forced siblings to abuse each other

2010-09-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.paddydoyle.com/

Link

09/05/2010

Defrocked priest Oliver O’Grady has cost diocese in California over $30m in abuse compensation

DEFROCKED Irish paedophile priest Oliver O’Grady forced a brother and a sister to perform sex acts on each other after he raped and sexually assaulted them in California over a number of years, the Sunday Tribune can reveal.

The brother and sister, who were aged seven and eight respectively when O’Grady began to abuse them in Presentation parish in California in the mid ’80s, were awarded $2m (€1.5m) in compensation in recent weeks.

The diocese of Stockton in California settled the case after a number of pre-trial hearings. In total, it is estimated that the diocese of Stockton has paid out over $30m (€23.3m) to victims of the convicted sex abuser.

Attorney Anthony De Marco, at the law firm Kiesel Boucher Larson in LA, took the civil action on behalf of the siblings.

“The abuse was as awful as you can imagine. O’Grady used to go into their classroom and take them out of class; they attended a Catholic elementary school. It was attached to a church and he would take them into the church to abuse them. He would abuse them in front of each other.

He forced one child to watch while he abused the other. He even made them do things to each other. He coerced them to abuse each other,” De Marco told the Sunday Tribune.

“The abuse went on for a few years. He also abused them in their family home. It was rape and sexual assault in both cases. The abuse was horrific. They are coping as best they can, they have obviously had a lot of therapy. I think coming forward helped them and getting resolution is helping towards their healing. But nothing will take away the images in their minds. I have dealt with over 400 victims of sexual abuse in southern California and come across some truly horrific offenders. But when I read the Oliver O’Grady file, the level of callousness and disregard for children appalled me.”

O’Grady was deported to Ireland in 2000 after spending seven years in prison in the US for sexually abusing two boys. He still lives here. He has admitted to sexually abusing many children in depositions, but has only been convicted for abuse against two boys. Dozens of victims of the former cleric have since come forward.

The former priest obtained notoriety when he agreed to feature in a documentary discussing his sexual abuse of children. Deliver Us From Evil, which was nominated for an Oscar, was released in 2006 and many of O’Grady’s victims also featured in it, discussing the impact his abuse has had on their lives.

The documentary also explored how high-ranking clergy in California moved O’Grady from one parish to another over several years when allegations of sexual abuse began to emerge.

Belfast priest jailed for indecent assault, abuse of three sisters.

2010-09-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

www.corkstudentnews.com

Link

09/03/2010

Fr Eugene Lewis (76) was based at the College of the Society of Missionaries of Africa, also known as the White Fathers, in Blacklion, Co Cavan, when he abused the young girls in Co Fermanagh between 1963 and 1973.

The priest denied 11 charges of indecent assault but a jury at Omagh Crown Court unanimously found him guilty of the sexual assaults. He was sentenced to four years in prison.

The Society of the Missionaries of Africa, to whom the priest belonged, last night said in a statement that it was “a matter of deep regret that a member of the society has been found guilty of a number of very serious offences by a court in Northern Ireland.

“It is understood that the priest is lodging an appeal against his conviction. Pending a resolution of that matter, it would be inappropriate for the society to comment further.”

Priest jailed for indecent assaults on three sisters

2010-09-07T11:55:00.000-07:00

www.irishtime.com

Link

09/03/2010

A CATHOLIC priest was jailed in Belfast yesterday for indecently assaulting three sisters at their home in Northern Ireland more than 40 years ago, after he befriended their parents.

Fr Eugene Lewis (76) was based at the College of the Society of Missionaries of Africa, also known as the White Fathers, in Blacklion, Co Cavan, when he abused the young girls in Co Fermanagh between 1963 and 1973.

He denied 11 charges of indecent assault but a jury at Omagh Crown Court was unanimous in finding him guilty at the end of a six-week trial in May. He was sentenced to four years in prison in Belfast yesterday.

Immediately afterwards his solicitor said he would be appealing the conviction.

In a brief statement last night the Society of the Missionaries of Africa said that it was “a matter of deep regret that a member of the society has been found guilty of a number of very serious offences by a court in Northern Ireland.

“It is understood that the priest is lodging an appeal against his conviction. Pending a resolution of that matter, it would be inappropriate for the society to comment further.”

In his judgment, Mr Justice Phillip Babington said the priest was introduced to the family by a fellow cleric who was related to them. Lewis would call at the family farm from time to time, generally in the evening.

The court heard the girls’ parents welcomed the visits, not only by Lewis but by the other White Fathers and students. They felt they would be beneficial for the children because of their experiences in life, in travelling the world and their Catholic ethos.

The court was told that Lewis in particular would spend time with the girls, telling them stories. The sisters did not tell each other or anyone else of the offences at the time.

They told the court they did not feel able to do so as the White Fathers were, to an extent, revered by their parents.

The catalyst was when one sister found a photograph which brought back memories. She subsequently made a complaint to the police. Her sisters did likewise.

Lewis has consistently denied all the allegations and suggested they were motivated by conspiracy or compensation claims.

He claimed in a pre-sentence report that his visits to the family home were “primarily to visit the girls’ father, acknowledge the children, tell a story, have a cup of tea and go”. The judge yesterday referred to statements given about the good character of Lewis. He said there was no doubt the priest was held in high regard by ex-students and colleagues and those he met while working in Africa, Germany and Britain.

The judge noted, however, that the type of offending behaviour the priest engaged in usually took place in private and well away from the eyes of colleagues, family and friends.

The judge also took account of the fact that Lewis is 76, was of generally good health and had a clear criminal record.

Judge Babington said it was clear from impact statements that the girls had all been adversely affected by the abuse and found the trial, which had to take place because Lewis denied the offences, deeply upsetting and stressful.

He said the three complainants were “very, very young” when they were abused. There was a “blatant and very serious breach of trust” as the complainants were abused in their home while their parents were in the house by a person seen as a figure of authority.

Other factors were that the abuse continued for more than 10 years and some of the offending was of a very serious nature.

Mr Justice Babington also disqualified Lewis from working with children indefinitely and ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for the rest of his life.

Priest sex abuse extradition hearing delayed

2010-09-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

www.sfgate.com

Link

09/03/2010

A former Roman Catholic priest awaiting extradition to Ireland on charges he sexually assaulted six boys while a priest during the late 1970s and early 1980s appeared in federal court Thursday and learned his extradition hearing would be further delayed.

Magistrate Maria-Elena James set a hearing for Sept. 23 to determine whether her court has jurisdiction over Patrick Joseph McCabe's case. A final extradition hearing is tentatively set for Nov. 2.

McCabe, 74, is being held in an Alameda County Jail. He suffers from a number of health problems, his attorney, David Cohen, said after the hearing.

"I don't think the court wants to oversee the deterioration of Mr. McCabe in jail," he said.
McCabe faces charges in Ireland, where no statute of limitations exists for his alleged crimes.
In the United States, two Eureka men filed lawsuits in the past two weeks against the Santa Rosa Diocese, where McCabe worked during the 1980s.

The men, who are not named in the lawsuits, say McCabe sexually abused them while they attended a church in Eureka and that Catholic officials knew of previous allegations against him.

Ireland: Priest sentenced for abusing three sisters

2010-09-07T11:46:00.000-07:00

http://www.momento24.com/

Link

09/02/2010

A Catholic priest in Northern Ireland was sentenced to four years in prison for sexually abusing three underage sisters 50 years ago.

Father Eugene Lewis, 76, denied the eleven counts of sexual assault committed between 1963 and 1973. The victims told that the priest abused of them when they were only seven years old in their home of Fermanagh, north of the country.

The jury has unanimously ruled against the abuser priest, who was a member of the Society of Missionaries in Africa, and who after serving his sentence, can never return to give a mass.

Joe McVeigh, defense attorney, said Lewis wants to “fight to prove his innocence.”

During the trial, it was learned that the abuse began when the priest met the family of the sisters through another religious, who introduced them.

Sex priest jailed for abusing sisters

2010-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

www.u.tv

Link

02/09/2010

Dublin based priest Father Eugene Lewis, unanimously convicted of sexually abusing three sisters in their Co Fermanagh home going back almost 50 years, has been jailed for a total of four years in a Belfast Court.

However, the 76-year-old disgraced former head of the White Fathers from their Cypress Grove headquarters in Templeogue Dublin, still maintains his innocence.

In a statement issued through his solicitor Joe McVeigh outside Belfast's Laganside Courthouse on Thursday, the paedophile priest, also placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for life, claimed that his Co Throne trial in Omagh Crown Court was a "miscarriage of justice".

Irish cardinal won't resign over coverup

2010-09-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

www.upi.com

Link

02/09/2010

An Irish cardinal blamed for covering up for one of Ireland's most abusive priests says he won't resign even though polls indicate most people say he should.

Cardinal Sean Brady, Ireland's highest-ranking Catholic official, said he has "moved on" since an investigation found he hid evidence of child abuse in 1975, CNN said Thursday.

"I've moved on there, I think, and I got a lot of support in my decision," Brady told CNN.

An investigation found Brady hid evidence of child abuse and had the two teenagers who reported it sign oaths of secrecy. The former priest was later convicted of child abuse and died in prison.

Brady apologized for not reporting the incidents.

"I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologize to you with all my heart," Brady said at his home church, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh.

A poll conducted for the Irish Times in June showed 75 percent of the respondents said Brady should resign, and only 1 in 10 think the church has responded adequately to the most recent investigation, CNN reported.

Pope Benedict XVI is to visit England and Scotland this month, but won't visit Ireland, the report said.

Extradited priest (82) sent for trial on sex abuse charges

2010-09-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

www.irishtime.com

Link

02/09/2010

AN 82-year-old priest has been sent forward for trial on two charges of sexually assaulting a boy in the west of Ireland more than four decades ago.

The priest appeared before Loughrea District Court in Co Galway yesterday charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year old boy at separate locations in the west of Ireland in 1968.

The priest, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sent forward for trial to the next sitting of Galway Circuit Criminal Court next month.

The priest, who was remanded on continuing bail, will appear before Galway Circuit Criminal Court on October 5th.

Insp Michael Coppinger gave evidence of serving the accused man with a book of evidence prior to yesterday’s sitting of Loughrea District Court.

The priest had been granted bail at a previous court sitting in July despite Garda objections.
He had arrived in Ireland in July on foot of an extradition warrant.

Defending solicitor Vincent Shannon told a previous court hearing that his client suffered from a number of ailments and had mobility difficulties.

Mr Shannon said suitable accommodation had been found for him in Dublin and the priest would remain there until his trial.

The accused priest, wearing black trousers, striped shirt and jacket, did not speak during the brief hearing yesterday in Loughrea.

Judge Geoffrey Browne remanded the defendant on existing bail on his own surety of €2,400 and an independent surety of €10,000.

The priest had been ordered to surrender his passport at a previous court hearing and report weekly to a Garda station in Dublin close to the address where he will reside.

Abusing priest Fr Eugene Lewis jailed for four years

2010-09-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

www.bbc.co.uk

Link

02/09/2010

Father Eugene Lewis, 76, was found guilty of 11 charges of assault between 1963 and 1973. The sisters said the abuse began when they were as young as seven. He had denied the charges.

The abuse took place at their County Fermanagh home.

In May, a jury in Omagh unanimously convicted Lewis, who lived in Dublin before his six-week trial. The former provincial superior of the Society of Missionaries of Africa was also accused of raping one of the sisters, but since the alleged incident happened in Dublin he could not be tried for the offence in Northern Ireland.'Miscarriage of justice'

In a statement issued through his solicitor outside court in Belfast on Thursday, the priest maintained his innocence and claimed his conviction was a "miscarriage of justice".

His solicitor Joe McVeigh said the priest intended to "fight to the last drop of his blood to establish his innocence completely".

He added that "many people from all over the world have expressed their outrage at his conviction and that he took great comfort from knowing that he has their support".

During the trial, the jury heard that Lewis had befriended the girls' parents nearly 50 years ago.

Prosecuting QC Ken McMahon said the priest had "wormed his way" into the family through a fellow, but innocent cleric.

Mr McMahon told the jury that although welcomed into their home at anytime, he often chose to call at bedtime or on Saturday bath night.

Lewis, who lived in Dublin, was ordained in 1958.

After his time in a seminary between 1960 and 1970, he went to Dublin and then served on missions overseas.

More recently he has worked in west Belfast.

Irish priest moved after '72 attack

2010-09-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

www.catholicsentinel.org

Link

09/01/2010

Church leaders in Northern Ireland were cleared of any “criminal intent” in the case of a priest accused of a 1972 Irish Republican Army bombing in Northern Ireland, an independent inquiry reports.

However, the report, based on an investigation by Britain’s police ombudsman into the handling of a bombing that killed nine people in Claudy, Northern Ireland, found that church leaders held secret talks with police and British government officials to discuss the case of Father James Chesney, who police believed was involved in the bombing.

After the talks, Cardinal William Conway of Armagh, Northern Ireland, agreed to move the priest in question across the border to the Irish Republic, apparently with the understanding that this would avoid police investigation.

Claudy bombing: Catholic Church 'more interested in making excuses'

2010-09-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Link

09/01/2010

The Catholic Church has been accused of showing more interest in making excuses than dealing with the pain of victims in its response to the Claudy bombing report.

It has been more than a week since the Police Ombudsman revealed the Church made a secret deal with the RUC and the British Government to prevent the arrest of Father James Chesney — the priest suspected of being an IRA leader and masterminding the 1972 atrocity — yet there has been no formal apology from the Church.

Last week a statement from Cardinal Sean Brady said the Church accepted the findings, but did not say sorry.

But this week the Catholic Communications Office released a statement in the name of former bishop Edward Daly, which called the findings into question and accused journalists of competing to write the most “lurid headlines”.

Bishop Daly stated: “I am not at all convinced that Father Chesney was involved in the Claudy bombing. I may be mistaken about that, but I do not think so.”

The Catholic Church’s response to the Claudy report has drawn comparisons to its handling of a series of allegations against priests of child sex abuse .

Fr Patrick McCafferty, who is originally from Belfast, said the Church has reverted to type in failing to address the concerns of victims.

He said: “I think it needs to be pointed out the Church has not been accused in this report of covering anything up. But they did cover up crimes against children, therefore it’s not so unbelievable that they would cover up something like this.

“Again the way they handle hurting human beings is often very unsatisfactory and that’s the shocking thing I think.

“Whether dealing with this atrocity or the victims of child abuse, the response is often dictated by covering their own actions and making excuses for themselves.

“It’s not focused on the pain and suffering of those who are coping with whatever form of trauma.”

Crisis communications specialist Nick Garbutt, from AsItIs Consulting, believes the Catholic Church should follow its own teachings and issue an apology.

“I don’t think there is any doubt or anybody has contested the fact that the Church spoke to the authorities and as a result of that Fr Chesney was moved,” he said.

“My point is that if you are faced with something like this, something that wasn’t moral, then you have to deal with it and have to step up and accept some responsibility for whatever it is you have done and apologise where appropriate — and I think this is certainly an instance where an apology is appropriate.”

VATICAN CRIMES IN IRELAND

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The Catholic Church's Corruption Began from It's First Pope Peter

219 Kids Murdered by Protesants in an Ireland Residential Home

Victim of Abuse in St. Joseph's Orphanage, Kilkenny Requests Public Enquiry

A Survivor tells Her Story of her Life in Ireland's Catholic Church run School

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco Facing Legal Action for Pedophile Cover Up

Open Letter to Brantford Expositor for Article Slandering Kevin Annett & Mohawk Nation

Kevin Annett at Occupy Toronto Announces Find of Children's Remains

Child Trafficking Scheme by Priests and Nuns Exposed on Telegracia TV: Evidencias

DO NOT Leave your Children Alone with a Clergy Member: Priest or Nun!

Priest Repellent: Keep Pedophiles Off!

Children's Bones Uncovered on Church-Run Residential School

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Canada: Mohawks Look to Excavate Mass Graves in Religious Residential Schools

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Occupy Vatican: Protests against the Catholic Church's colossal wealth from organized crime

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Systematic Abuse: Vatican kills over 50,000 children in Canada using same "residential school" system as in Ireland

Residential school mass grave dug up to prove mass murder covered up by Church and State in Canada

Response a 'stage' towards repairing relations

Victims disappointed with response

It takes 25 pages and 11,000 words to say - 'nothing to do with us'

Inquiries under way into alleged abuse at Cork school

Rift Grows Between Ireland, Vatican Over Priest Abuse Allegations

Fr Donncha Mac Cárthaigh brother investigated sex abuse claims

Cloyne report finds failures by church, State agencies

Background to the Cloyne report

Another suspicious baby’s death in the care of Nuns in Ireland

Hunger Strike for Justice - Ryan Report 2009

Ireland abuse victims speak out about the power of the Catholic Church: TeleGracia Investigates

No To The Beatification of John Paul II, Pedophile Protector

Video: Testimonies of victims whose stories John Paul II never wanted to hearhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyhdaTQCS4

In brief: Ex-priest guilty of sex assault

New York Times Magazine says Irish Turning Their Back on Church

The Irish Affliction

Irish state consider further charges against pedophile Oliver O’Grady

Former priest may face further charges, court told

State considers more charges against O’Grady

One last chance for the Vatican to come clean

Clerical sex abuse victims take part in papal inquiry

New priest pedophile scandal set to break in Ireland

Clerical abuse inquiry panel to meet NI victims

Eight Cloyne clerical abuse files to be resent to DPP

Gardaí resubmit files on sex abuse

Vatican letter shows ‘Paedophiles not keen on being identified as paedophiles’

Secret Vatican Edict: Don't Report Abusive Priests

The Tangled Web Tightens for the Vatican

Confidential message to Irish clergy could feed lawsuits around world

Vatican letter on sex abuse from '97 revealed

Irish TV show charges Vatican urged bishops to keep silent on abuse

New chapter opened in sex abuse claims

Irish Protesters demand end to government collusion with Catholic church child rapists: ITCCS members rally in Dublin, issue statement

La verdadera cara: "Escuelas Industriales" en Irlanda administradas por el vaticano

Shock among parishioners at the request by the Bishop Brennan for their help to pay compensation and bill

The Ryan Report cover-up Irish child abuse:

Abuse compensation: The amount some Catholic Church dioceses have paid

O'Grady may face more charges

Vatican tried to protect paedophile priest, Dublin abuse report shows

Murphy Report Chapter 19: Main points & timeline

Questions remain as eyes turn to two serving bishops and canon lawyers

Full text of Chapter 19 of the Murphy Report

Walsh a 'serial paedophile' - Martin

What is chapter 19?

Uncomfortable for Dublin and Vatican

Report finds Walsh 'most notorious' child abuser

O'Grady may face more charges

Former priest Oliver O'Grady arrested for child porn

'Deliver Us from Evil' priest arrested in Ireland

Leaked Cables Show Vatican Tensions and Diplomacy With U.S.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 11, 2010, on page A9 of the New York edition.

Factbox: European Catholic sex abuse cases in 2010

WikiLeaks: Sex abuse scandal left rift in Vatican-Ireland relations

Vatican refused to help Irish sex abuse probe: US cable Read more: Vatican refused to help Irish sex abuse probe: US cable - The Times of India http:

US embassy cables: Vatican used sovereign status in face of Irish child abuse investigation

Video: Testimonies of victims whose stories John Paul II never wanted to hear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyhdaTQCS4