via CBS:
CHICAGO (CBS/AP) – After a 13-year-old boy reported in 1979 that a priest raped him and later threatened him at gunpoint to keep quiet, the Archdiocese of Chicago assured the boy’s parents that although the cleric avoided prosecution, he would receive treatment and have no further contact with minors.
But the Rev. William Cloutier, who already had been accused of molesting other children, was returned to ministry a year later and accused of more abuse before he resigned in 1993, two years after the boy’s parents filed a lawsuit. Officials took no action against Cloutier over his earliest transgressions because he “sounded repentant,” according to internal archdiocese documents released Tuesday that show how the archdiocese tried to contain a mounting scandal over child sexual abuse.
For decades, those at the highest levels of the nation’s third-largest archdiocese moved accused priests from parish to parish while hiding the clerics’ histories from the public. The documents, released through settlements between attorneys for the archdiocese and victims, describe how the late Cardinals John Cody and Joseph Bernardin often approved the reassignments. The archdiocese removed some priests from ministry, but often years or decades after the clergy were known to have molested children.
Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Sunday, August 11, 2013
The Knights of Columbus and child abuse cover-up*
This post contains details that may be upsetting for sensitive readers.
The Knights of Columbus (KOC) are commonly known as the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, but most people don't know that the Knights also function as a recruiting organization for highly exclusive Catholic equestrian orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The history of equestrian orders dates back to Ancient Rome, where the order comprised a large proportion of the patrician classes that monopolized the Roman political process, as well as most major commercial enterprises. Today, this same oligarchical tradition is continued through Catholic equestrian orders that subvert the democratic process by way of quasi-political religious organizations. While the KOC does not represent the upper echelons of the Catholic cryptocracy, that dubious honor instead being designated for the equestrian orders noted above, their political influence as an arm of the Vatican has been significant enough to play a role in silencing countless victims of clerical abuse.
The photo above captures the opening Mass of the 131st annual Knights of Columbus convention on August 6 in San Antonio. Included in the photo is church leader Cardinal Roger Mahoney, who the New York Times states "worked quietly to keep evidence of child molesting away from law enforcement officials and shield abusive priests from criminal prosecution more than a decade before the scandal became public, according to confidential church records." The article continues, "Rather than defrocking priests and contacting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had molested children to out-of-state treatment facilities...Ray Boucher, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs in those cases, said the files released on Monday were “particularly damning,” because they showed the “wanton disregard for the health and safety of children, and a decision by the highest members of the church to put its self-interest and the interest of abusive priests ahead of those of children.”"
Also pictured above is Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been accused of sexual assault by former Benectine monk and Catholic priest Richard Sipe. According to Sipe, "On file are the unsealed “MEDIATION DOCUMENTATION FOR FR. G.” that involved McCarrick and the dioceses of Metuchen and Newark, NJ. A financial settlement was reached. The case was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, but it has not yet responded." What follows is an excerpt of the events described in the mediation document:
A news article reports that the Knights of Columbus sponsored a youth group, the Squires, members of which have accused the KOC of collaborating to cover of child sexual abuse. The article states "In one of the lawsuits, an unnamed Kansas resident claims the Squires leader abused him from 1978, when he was 10 years old, until 1986. He claims the leader shared him with other youth counselors in the group and threatened to kill him if he told anyone, the lawsuit said. The second lawsuit came from Texas resident Jim Dennany, who said he alerted Knights of Columbus officials in 1986 to assaults he said he suffered in the 1970s when he was a young teenager. He claimed the group took no action, concealed the allegations and told him to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit."
According to former Domnican priest and canon lawyer Thomas Doyle, "The Knights of Columbus take great pride in their loyalty to the Church and to the bishops. They regularly show their support for priests and announce their love for the Church. They shell out barrels of money to the Vatican, to bishops, to seminaries and to other causes in support of priests. The Knights of Columbus have totally missed the boat. They have supported priests and bishops in their moral bankruptcy and in their destruction of the bodies and souls of the victims of abuse. They have said and done nothing to support the victims."
So it may not be much of a surprise that a Pennsyvania newspaper, the Observer-Reporter, reported that convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky was awarded Coach of the Year title by the KOC. Sandusky has also been a speaker at KOC events. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was assigned to investigate the Sandusky scandal. "We will immediately report any evidence of criminality to law enforcement authorities," said Freeh. New York state newspaper The Journal News reports that Louis Freeh, along with suspected Russian spy Robert Hanssen, are both members of the secretive Catholic fraternty Opus Dei. In his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, Robert Hutchinson writes of the canonization of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva, noting that in attendance was "Dr Carl A. Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and senior American member of Opus Dei." Given the overlapping membership between Opus Dei and the KOC, the likelihood that the Penn State investigation was doomed by favoritism from the very beginning is very high indeed.
According to Vatican Insider, a project run by the daily newspaper La Stampa, Opus Dei is "one of the ecclesiastical bodies closest to the Pope". So the testimony of Jim Jenkins, former chair of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Review Board under Archbishop (now Cardinal) William Levada, should not be ignored. Jenkins states, in reference to the Dallas Charter which provided guidelines for how the Church would respond to the clerical abuse scandal, that "The Charter’s scope needed to be limited to the alleged assaults upon “minors” leaving the inappropriate sexual behavior of clerics with other adults beyond the jurisdiction of the review boards." In other words, the sexual assault of adults was considered to be acceptable behavior. Jenkins also states that "The behavior of bishops and cardinals was off-limits to the scope of any investigation by any archdiocesan review board." Translation: bishops and cardinals are not subject to civil law.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Pope Benedict XVI was responsible for investigating clerical abuse scandals. Let's examine some of his accomplishments during that time period.
via CBS News:
The Vatican's lawyer says then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told a California bishop to make sure a priest with a history of sexually molesting children didn't abuse while the church worked to defrock him...Attorney Jeffrey Lena was responding to a 1985 letter obtained by The Associated Press on Friday in which the future pope said more time was needed to study the case of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle. Lena says Ratzinger urged the bishop to give Kiesle "as much paternal care as possible." Lena says that was a way of saying the bishop was responsible for ensuring Kiesle didn't reoffend....The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock Kiesle, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to the 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle...
Attorney Irwin Zalkin represents a woman who says Kiesle assaulted her three times by the time she was 7 years old. Court documents accuse Kiesle of providing her with wine, binding her hands and sexually abusing her, Tracy reports....Earlier Friday, the Vatican confirmed that it was Ratzinger's signature on the letter. "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said....The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests. The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church..... the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.
Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory. As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him. In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers. "It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982...California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials....As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975.
Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP. "Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take." She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said. Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations. He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.
Now would probably be a good time to include this painting by the highly talented tattoo artist Paul Booth:
*Research credit for many links in this post is due http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-opus-dei-knights-shield-sandusky.html
The Knights of Columbus (KOC) are commonly known as the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, but most people don't know that the Knights also function as a recruiting organization for highly exclusive Catholic equestrian orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The history of equestrian orders dates back to Ancient Rome, where the order comprised a large proportion of the patrician classes that monopolized the Roman political process, as well as most major commercial enterprises. Today, this same oligarchical tradition is continued through Catholic equestrian orders that subvert the democratic process by way of quasi-political religious organizations. While the KOC does not represent the upper echelons of the Catholic cryptocracy, that dubious honor instead being designated for the equestrian orders noted above, their political influence as an arm of the Vatican has been significant enough to play a role in silencing countless victims of clerical abuse.
The photo above captures the opening Mass of the 131st annual Knights of Columbus convention on August 6 in San Antonio. Included in the photo is church leader Cardinal Roger Mahoney, who the New York Times states "worked quietly to keep evidence of child molesting away from law enforcement officials and shield abusive priests from criminal prosecution more than a decade before the scandal became public, according to confidential church records." The article continues, "Rather than defrocking priests and contacting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had molested children to out-of-state treatment facilities...Ray Boucher, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs in those cases, said the files released on Monday were “particularly damning,” because they showed the “wanton disregard for the health and safety of children, and a decision by the highest members of the church to put its self-interest and the interest of abusive priests ahead of those of children.”"
Also pictured above is Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been accused of sexual assault by former Benectine monk and Catholic priest Richard Sipe. According to Sipe, "On file are the unsealed “MEDIATION DOCUMENTATION FOR FR. G.” that involved McCarrick and the dioceses of Metuchen and Newark, NJ. A financial settlement was reached. The case was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, but it has not yet responded." What follows is an excerpt of the events described in the mediation document:
“He put his arms around me and wrapped his legs around mine. Then He started to tell me what a nice young man I was and what a good priest I would make someday. He also told me about the hard work and stress he was facing in his new role as Archbishop of Newark. He told me how everyone knows him and how powerful he was. The Archbishop kept saying, “Pray for your poor uncle.” All of a sudden, I felt paralyzed. I didn’t have my own car and there was nowhere to go. The Archbishop started to kiss me and move his hands and legs around me. I remained frozen, curled up like a ball. I felt his penis inside his underwear leaning against my buttocks as he was rubbing my legs up and down. His hands were moving up and down my chest and back, while tightening his legs around mine. I tried to scream but could not…I was paralyzed with fear. As he continued touching me, I felt more afraid. He even tried several times to force his hands under my shorts. He tried to roll me over so that he could get on top of me, but I resisted, I felt sick and disgusted and finally was able to jump out of bed. I went into the bathroom where I vomited several times and started to cry. After twenty minutes in the bathroom, the Archbishop told me to come back to bed. Instead I went to the recliner and pretended to fall asleep.”
A news article reports that the Knights of Columbus sponsored a youth group, the Squires, members of which have accused the KOC of collaborating to cover of child sexual abuse. The article states "In one of the lawsuits, an unnamed Kansas resident claims the Squires leader abused him from 1978, when he was 10 years old, until 1986. He claims the leader shared him with other youth counselors in the group and threatened to kill him if he told anyone, the lawsuit said. The second lawsuit came from Texas resident Jim Dennany, who said he alerted Knights of Columbus officials in 1986 to assaults he said he suffered in the 1970s when he was a young teenager. He claimed the group took no action, concealed the allegations and told him to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit."
According to former Domnican priest and canon lawyer Thomas Doyle, "The Knights of Columbus take great pride in their loyalty to the Church and to the bishops. They regularly show their support for priests and announce their love for the Church. They shell out barrels of money to the Vatican, to bishops, to seminaries and to other causes in support of priests. The Knights of Columbus have totally missed the boat. They have supported priests and bishops in their moral bankruptcy and in their destruction of the bodies and souls of the victims of abuse. They have said and done nothing to support the victims."
So it may not be much of a surprise that a Pennsyvania newspaper, the Observer-Reporter, reported that convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky was awarded Coach of the Year title by the KOC. Sandusky has also been a speaker at KOC events. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was assigned to investigate the Sandusky scandal. "We will immediately report any evidence of criminality to law enforcement authorities," said Freeh. New York state newspaper The Journal News reports that Louis Freeh, along with suspected Russian spy Robert Hanssen, are both members of the secretive Catholic fraternty Opus Dei. In his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, Robert Hutchinson writes of the canonization of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva, noting that in attendance was "Dr Carl A. Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and senior American member of Opus Dei." Given the overlapping membership between Opus Dei and the KOC, the likelihood that the Penn State investigation was doomed by favoritism from the very beginning is very high indeed.
According to Vatican Insider, a project run by the daily newspaper La Stampa, Opus Dei is "one of the ecclesiastical bodies closest to the Pope". So the testimony of Jim Jenkins, former chair of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Review Board under Archbishop (now Cardinal) William Levada, should not be ignored. Jenkins states, in reference to the Dallas Charter which provided guidelines for how the Church would respond to the clerical abuse scandal, that "The Charter’s scope needed to be limited to the alleged assaults upon “minors” leaving the inappropriate sexual behavior of clerics with other adults beyond the jurisdiction of the review boards." In other words, the sexual assault of adults was considered to be acceptable behavior. Jenkins also states that "The behavior of bishops and cardinals was off-limits to the scope of any investigation by any archdiocesan review board." Translation: bishops and cardinals are not subject to civil law.
As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Pope Benedict XVI was responsible for investigating clerical abuse scandals. Let's examine some of his accomplishments during that time period.
via CBS News:
The Vatican's lawyer says then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told a California bishop to make sure a priest with a history of sexually molesting children didn't abuse while the church worked to defrock him...Attorney Jeffrey Lena was responding to a 1985 letter obtained by The Associated Press on Friday in which the future pope said more time was needed to study the case of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle. Lena says Ratzinger urged the bishop to give Kiesle "as much paternal care as possible." Lena says that was a way of saying the bishop was responsible for ensuring Kiesle didn't reoffend....The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock Kiesle, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to the 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle...
Attorney Irwin Zalkin represents a woman who says Kiesle assaulted her three times by the time she was 7 years old. Court documents accuse Kiesle of providing her with wine, binding her hands and sexually abusing her, Tracy reports....Earlier Friday, the Vatican confirmed that it was Ratzinger's signature on the letter. "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said....The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests. The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church..... the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.
Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory. As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him. In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers. "It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982...California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials....As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975.
Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP. "Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take." She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said. Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations. He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.
Now would probably be a good time to include this painting by the highly talented tattoo artist Paul Booth:
*Research credit for many links in this post is due http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-opus-dei-knights-shield-sandusky.html
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Amnesty International calls abuse of tens of thousands in Catholic reformatories an act of torture
via: Catholic News Service
Credit is due the Catholic News Service for exposing this appalling problem. Here the wide gulf in ethical legitimacy between the laity and much of the clergy is made evident. As always, it is necessary to distinguish between Church as an expression of the people and Church as an expression of hierarchy, because the former invariably holds a greater claim to the roots of Christian charity and compassion, and where corrupt, impractical doctrines are maintained, those precepts are largely disregarded, even where lip service is given. This pattern is displayed here most obviously, where Pope Benedict's numerous attempts to keep information about pedophilia in the Church from legal authorities have thankfully been ignored.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The abuse of children in Irish institutions amounted to torture and represents an enormous human rights failure, Amnesty International Ireland said.
Based on evidence revealed by a number of independent commissions, "children were tortured. They were brutalized, beaten, starved and abused," said Colm O'Gorman, executive director of the Ireland office of the human rights organization..."At every turn, Irish people kept their mouths shut out of deference to state, system, church and community," she said.
She said, "We must create a society in which no-one is afraid to speak. In which no-one is afraid to challenge authority and power, because deference to the powerful is a guaranteed way to help that power corrupt." more:
Credit is due the Catholic News Service for exposing this appalling problem. Here the wide gulf in ethical legitimacy between the laity and much of the clergy is made evident. As always, it is necessary to distinguish between Church as an expression of the people and Church as an expression of hierarchy, because the former invariably holds a greater claim to the roots of Christian charity and compassion, and where corrupt, impractical doctrines are maintained, those precepts are largely disregarded, even where lip service is given. This pattern is displayed here most obviously, where Pope Benedict's numerous attempts to keep information about pedophilia in the Church from legal authorities have thankfully been ignored.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The abuse of children in Irish institutions amounted to torture and represents an enormous human rights failure, Amnesty International Ireland said.
Based on evidence revealed by a number of independent commissions, "children were tortured. They were brutalized, beaten, starved and abused," said Colm O'Gorman, executive director of the Ireland office of the human rights organization..."At every turn, Irish people kept their mouths shut out of deference to state, system, church and community," she said.
She said, "We must create a society in which no-one is afraid to speak. In which no-one is afraid to challenge authority and power, because deference to the powerful is a guaranteed way to help that power corrupt." more:
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Torture Alleged at Chain of Children's Homes, (edited)
via:Courthouse News Service
Warning: This post is not for the squeamish.
So, what follows below is yet another national chain of children's homes involved in what seems to be a cover for ritual abuse, the likes of which have been uncovered countless times with nearly identical indicators, such as sexual assault, locking children in cages, binding their hands and feet and forcing them to eat vomit/feces. One of the other national chains involved in religious ritual abuse was Kindercare, a company whose logo contains a barely concealed all-seeing eye. More information about Kindercare follows at the end of this post.
Make note of the fact that the following excerpt concerns abuse occurring at a Mormon children's home, because the numerous links between Mormonism and Freemasonry are well established, and regular readers here are already aware of Freemasonry's central role in trauma-based mind control projects. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was himself a Master Mason who inspired the construction of a Salt Lake City Great Sphinx statue that bears his likeness, in keeping with Freemasonry's fascination with Ancient Mysteries. Other Masonic imagery such as the compass and square can be found in Mormon temple garments. For a comprehensive overview regarding the long history of torture and cult abuse within the Mormon Church, refer to this page on the S.M.A.R.T.(Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today) website, which details personal accounts involving groups of up to 800 individuals. In nearly every single scenario described, Freemasons were present. Please be aware that the descriptions contained within may be difficult to read.
It is also important to know that these well-organized abuses have been allowed to continue on account of legislation passed by former Texas Governor George Bush, who enacted laws that exempted faith-based institutions from governmental oversight. Mother Jones recently published an article, Escape From Missouri, which documents how this deregulation allowed for the proliferation of a network of Christian residential facilities for "troubled teens", where physical and psychological abuse were routine. The homes were typically located in remote rural areas, sometimes surrounded by barbed wire fences. Residents were often severely beaten, kept in isolation rooms with no bathroom access, forced to wear high heels for weeks at a time and cut off from all communication with their families.
When deputies finally raided one of the homes they discovered handguns, rifles, leg irons and handcuffs. Former residents testified that armed staffers would sometimes "go hunting for runaways". In 2007 several deaths at the homes resulted in a House Resolution, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, which would have banned the use of physical and chemical restraints in residential facilities. The bill died in the Senate when GOP members stated "This bill is not needed. The states and the localities can handle this situation. They will look after the children." Many former staffers, including Reclamation Ranch founder Jack Patterson, who was charged with aggravated child abuse, continue to own teen homes across the country. According to Mother Jones, the network of Christian homes is linked by overlapping leadership and connections to religious institutions, particularly Christian universities. It is worth keeping situations like this one in mind when discussing issues like states' rights or "religious freedom", especially since the "troubled teen" industry has been a key fund raiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Because the size of government is not the only aspect defining its intrusion into the lives of the people and, in this scenario, as well as in many others, "smaller government" did nothing to protect vulnerable people from the most severe human rights abuses, since it allowed for the rise of a dangerous strain of religious fundamentalism every bit as destructive as centralized bureaucracy.
Torture Alleged at Chain of Children's Homes
SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - Hundreds of parents claim a group of boarding schools tortured their children: locked them in dog cages, forced them to lie in feces and eat vomit, masturbated them and denied the troubled teens any religion "except for the Mormon faith."
The Utah-based World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools and its owners - Robert Lichfield, Brent Facer and Ken Kay - went to great lengths to hide the "torture," which began in the mid-1990s and continued for a decade, the 357 plaintiffs claim in Salt Lake County Court.
The plaintiffs say that 59 schools and owners tied to the company "jointly promoted, advertised, and marketed defendants' residential boarding schools as a place where children with problems could get an education while receiving instruction and direction in behavior modification for emotional growth and personal development."...
According to the complaint, students were locked in boxes, cages and basements at the schools, denied medical and dental care, and forced "to carry heavy bags of sand around their necks or logs throughout the day over many days."
They were sexually abused, "which included forced sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation performed on them," according to the 119-page complaint.... forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, boxspring, or plywood," and put to forced labor...more...
Here, also, is an excerpt from David Icke's Biggest Secret, about the Kindercare company:
One unfolding story I have featured on my website is that of Zack. He is a little boy who attended a pre-school operated by a company called Kindercare at 100 Endeavor Way, Cary, North Carolina. Kindercare is the biggest pre-school organization in the United States. Zack's experience contains all the elements of the constantly recurring reports of child abuse, both in what he says happened to him and the shocking lack of investigation by the authorities that are supposed to be protecting children.
This story and all the quotes by his parents and grandmother are from direct correspondence and conversations with me.4 Zack said that he was taken from the centre in Cary to a house where he was tied up and made to watch people sacrifice a little boy. He said that he and other children were made to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the dead child. He also said that they took his own blood. He had a small circular puncture on his elbow, which looked like a mole was growing there. He said this is where they put the "needle-knife" into him.
He has also talked of large spiders he saw in movies on these occasions and of seeing "bad movies" all the time. The mother of another boy at the centre, a four year old called Tyler, said her son had asked her if it was all right for people "to eat each other". Zack talked about a "green" party at the school in which the children were given green food and juice. He said the children were given gifts at the party, but he was given 'poop'. When asked if anyone else got poop and he said:
"No, only me -the other kids got cars and things like that."
He said the sandwiches were all green with "yucky mustard" and "there was blood". Suzen, his grandmother, asked him what happened when he wouldn't eat it and he said:
"We all went to sleep." He also said: "They put blood in the oatmeal at the school."
And another from the San Jose Mercury regarding the abuses coordinated by former Army colonel Michael Aquino:
CHILD ABUSE AT THE PRESIDIO
THE PARENTS' AGONY, THE ARMY'S COVERUP, THE PROSECUTION'S FAILURE.
The preschool and hourly care programs were both run by the US. Army at the Presidio of San Francisco, a sprawling compound of turnofthecentury wood and brick buildings, headquarters of the Sixth Army, the place that motorists glimpse through the pines on their way to the Golden Gate Bridge.
On that day that changed her life and the lives of her family, Joyce Tobin arrived at the Presidio day care center at 2:30 p.m. Her son appeared to be napping with several other children, and the teacher, Gary Hambright, was sitting at a table in the room...
That night, while watching television with his older brother, the 3-year-old started playing with his penis, pulling it forward with both hands and letting go. "Mr. Gary do it," he said and kept at it. His brother ran for their mother, who was talking to a neighbor in the front doorway. Trying to keep her voice calm, Joyce asked her son what he was talking about.
The child's reply was terse and grim. "He touched my penis with his hand, and he bit my penis." The boy made a chomping sound with his mouth. Asked if "Mr. Gary" had done anything else, the boy said, "He put a pencil in my hole in my bottom. He do that, he do that to me. He hurt me and I cry and I cry."...
CASARC reviews more than 700 cases of suspected sexual abuse every year. Among other things, the CASARC staff had often heard children describe anal rape as having a pencil put in their bottoms. When Dr. Kevin Coulter examined the Tobins' son, he observed that the child's anus dilated to approximately 20 millimeters in approximately five seconds, a much faster and wider dilation than normal. Coulter had conducted more than 300 examinations of children at CASARC. His conclusion was that such rapid and wide dilation was caused by trauma to the anus and rectum, consistent with penetration. The Tobins' 3-year-old son had been sexually abused, anally raped.
...it took the Army almost a month to notify the parents of other children who had been in "Mr. Gary's' class that the incident had taken place, that their children might be at risk. Nearly a year would pass before more than 59 other victims children between the ages of 3 and 7 had been identified. And allegations would be made by parents that several more children were molested even after the investigation had begun.
...The children had begun to talk. And they kept talking. That was the problem. They kept saying things that no one, especially not the Army, wanted to hear. They kept mentioning other people besides "Mr. Gary," other locations besides the day care center. Among the allegations:
Some of the children said they were taken from the day care center to private homes on the Presidio where they were sexually abused. Two houses were singled out on the Army post and at least one home off-post, in San Francisco.
One girl said she played "poopoo baseball" at the home of one of her female teachers. The girl said the game involved throwing feces at the teacher.
Other children talked about playing the "googoo game" with "Mr. Gary". It involved Hambright having the children urinate and defecate on him. Then he would do the same to them. Sometimes, the children said, they were forced to drink urine and eat feces. Some said they had blood smeared on their bodies.
Some children said they had guns pointed at them. Others said they were told they or their parents would be killed if they told what happened.
One 3-year-old boy said he was sexually abused on his first visit to the center. That day was also his birthday.
A 3-year-old girl said "Mr. Gary" used special pens, black, blue, pink and red -- to doodle on her, starting at her legs and moving up over her genitals. The same child said she saw one of her friends at the center cry when "Mr. Gary's" friend, a woman, pointed a gun at the friend.
There were five confirmed cases of chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, including two of the four daughters of one family.
A preliminary test of one boy for AIDS came back positive. Further tests revealed that a he did not have the disease, but fear of AIDS tormented parents for months. .
...The core group of parents consisted of professional people doctors, a dentist, a nuclear scientist. They spoke out loud and often. They said they spoke for those who could not, the children and the enlisted people who, they said, were too afraid to risk their military career to speak out. The enlisted people needed their jobs and the day care. The core group could afford day care elsewhere.
...NONE OF THE PARENTS WHO WERE PROTESTING the Army's handling of the case knew that signs of trouble had surfaced at the center at least six years earlier. And none of them knew that the Army had been dealing with sex abuse problems at its day care centers for years before the Presidio case broke.
The Army said nothing of prior cases at West Point and Fort Dix. The Army said nothing of an investigation six years before involving John Gunnarson, the Presidio's top day care official and the supervisor of the day care center during the time Hambright allegedly molested the children.
In 1982, Gunnarson was child support services coordinator at the center, responsible for the training of the center staff, when he was arrested on charges of assaulting an employee of the center, Pearl Broadnax. Broadnax had been complaining about conditions at the center and treatment of the children. She say she was branded a troublemaker and often called to task about her job performance. On Feb. 3, 1982, she and Gunnarson argued over the use of scissors by the children. He asked her to go into another room to continue the discussion, but Broadnax said she wanted to remain in the playroom. "At this time," according to an investigative report of the incident, "Gunnarson grabbed Broadnax by the left arm above her wrist and pulled her toward him. She then told Gunnarson, "don't touch me," to which he replied, I'm not touching you." She felt that she was in fear of bodily harm at this point in the incident.
...Now a deputy sheriff in Santa Clara County, Albanoski called after he read one of my stories about the Presidio case. "When I read the paper, I almost fell out of my chair," Albanoski said ""I couldn't believe [Gunnarson] was still working there" While interviewing Broadnax at the day care center after she had called MPs about Gunnarson, Albanoski learned that Broadnax was concerned about more than the alleged threat of harm to herself. She also alleged that employees had touched children's genitals improperly...Broadnax also said she had seen the then director of the center hit a child in the mouth, making him bleed.
...Capt. Robert J. Meyer was appointed to look into the allegations for the commander of the Presidio in a letter summarizing his findings, Meyers said, "at least three of the Child Care Center staff have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if they speak out and tell the truth about how the Child Care Center is being managed and how the minority children are treated." A hearing was held at the Presidio on the allegations in 1981. The director in question was reinstated. more...
Warning: This post is not for the squeamish.
So, what follows below is yet another national chain of children's homes involved in what seems to be a cover for ritual abuse, the likes of which have been uncovered countless times with nearly identical indicators, such as sexual assault, locking children in cages, binding their hands and feet and forcing them to eat vomit/feces. One of the other national chains involved in religious ritual abuse was Kindercare, a company whose logo contains a barely concealed all-seeing eye. More information about Kindercare follows at the end of this post.
Make note of the fact that the following excerpt concerns abuse occurring at a Mormon children's home, because the numerous links between Mormonism and Freemasonry are well established, and regular readers here are already aware of Freemasonry's central role in trauma-based mind control projects. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was himself a Master Mason who inspired the construction of a Salt Lake City Great Sphinx statue that bears his likeness, in keeping with Freemasonry's fascination with Ancient Mysteries. Other Masonic imagery such as the compass and square can be found in Mormon temple garments. For a comprehensive overview regarding the long history of torture and cult abuse within the Mormon Church, refer to this page on the S.M.A.R.T.(Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today) website, which details personal accounts involving groups of up to 800 individuals. In nearly every single scenario described, Freemasons were present. Please be aware that the descriptions contained within may be difficult to read.
It is also important to know that these well-organized abuses have been allowed to continue on account of legislation passed by former Texas Governor George Bush, who enacted laws that exempted faith-based institutions from governmental oversight. Mother Jones recently published an article, Escape From Missouri, which documents how this deregulation allowed for the proliferation of a network of Christian residential facilities for "troubled teens", where physical and psychological abuse were routine. The homes were typically located in remote rural areas, sometimes surrounded by barbed wire fences. Residents were often severely beaten, kept in isolation rooms with no bathroom access, forced to wear high heels for weeks at a time and cut off from all communication with their families.
When deputies finally raided one of the homes they discovered handguns, rifles, leg irons and handcuffs. Former residents testified that armed staffers would sometimes "go hunting for runaways". In 2007 several deaths at the homes resulted in a House Resolution, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, which would have banned the use of physical and chemical restraints in residential facilities. The bill died in the Senate when GOP members stated "This bill is not needed. The states and the localities can handle this situation. They will look after the children." Many former staffers, including Reclamation Ranch founder Jack Patterson, who was charged with aggravated child abuse, continue to own teen homes across the country. According to Mother Jones, the network of Christian homes is linked by overlapping leadership and connections to religious institutions, particularly Christian universities. It is worth keeping situations like this one in mind when discussing issues like states' rights or "religious freedom", especially since the "troubled teen" industry has been a key fund raiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Because the size of government is not the only aspect defining its intrusion into the lives of the people and, in this scenario, as well as in many others, "smaller government" did nothing to protect vulnerable people from the most severe human rights abuses, since it allowed for the rise of a dangerous strain of religious fundamentalism every bit as destructive as centralized bureaucracy.
Torture Alleged at Chain of Children's Homes
SALT LAKE CITY (CN) - Hundreds of parents claim a group of boarding schools tortured their children: locked them in dog cages, forced them to lie in feces and eat vomit, masturbated them and denied the troubled teens any religion "except for the Mormon faith."
The Utah-based World Wide Association Of Specialty Programs and Schools and its owners - Robert Lichfield, Brent Facer and Ken Kay - went to great lengths to hide the "torture," which began in the mid-1990s and continued for a decade, the 357 plaintiffs claim in Salt Lake County Court.
The plaintiffs say that 59 schools and owners tied to the company "jointly promoted, advertised, and marketed defendants' residential boarding schools as a place where children with problems could get an education while receiving instruction and direction in behavior modification for emotional growth and personal development."...
According to the complaint, students were locked in boxes, cages and basements at the schools, denied medical and dental care, and forced "to carry heavy bags of sand around their necks or logs throughout the day over many days."
They were sexually abused, "which included forced sexual relations and acts of fondling and masturbation performed on them," according to the 119-page complaint.... forced to sleep on cold concrete floors, boxspring, or plywood," and put to forced labor...more...
Here, also, is an excerpt from David Icke's Biggest Secret, about the Kindercare company:
One unfolding story I have featured on my website is that of Zack. He is a little boy who attended a pre-school operated by a company called Kindercare at 100 Endeavor Way, Cary, North Carolina. Kindercare is the biggest pre-school organization in the United States. Zack's experience contains all the elements of the constantly recurring reports of child abuse, both in what he says happened to him and the shocking lack of investigation by the authorities that are supposed to be protecting children.
This story and all the quotes by his parents and grandmother are from direct correspondence and conversations with me.4 Zack said that he was taken from the centre in Cary to a house where he was tied up and made to watch people sacrifice a little boy. He said that he and other children were made to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the dead child. He also said that they took his own blood. He had a small circular puncture on his elbow, which looked like a mole was growing there. He said this is where they put the "needle-knife" into him.
He has also talked of large spiders he saw in movies on these occasions and of seeing "bad movies" all the time. The mother of another boy at the centre, a four year old called Tyler, said her son had asked her if it was all right for people "to eat each other". Zack talked about a "green" party at the school in which the children were given green food and juice. He said the children were given gifts at the party, but he was given 'poop'. When asked if anyone else got poop and he said:
"No, only me -the other kids got cars and things like that."
He said the sandwiches were all green with "yucky mustard" and "there was blood". Suzen, his grandmother, asked him what happened when he wouldn't eat it and he said:
"We all went to sleep." He also said: "They put blood in the oatmeal at the school."
And another from the San Jose Mercury regarding the abuses coordinated by former Army colonel Michael Aquino:
CHILD ABUSE AT THE PRESIDIO
THE PARENTS' AGONY, THE ARMY'S COVERUP, THE PROSECUTION'S FAILURE.
The preschool and hourly care programs were both run by the US. Army at the Presidio of San Francisco, a sprawling compound of turnofthecentury wood and brick buildings, headquarters of the Sixth Army, the place that motorists glimpse through the pines on their way to the Golden Gate Bridge.
On that day that changed her life and the lives of her family, Joyce Tobin arrived at the Presidio day care center at 2:30 p.m. Her son appeared to be napping with several other children, and the teacher, Gary Hambright, was sitting at a table in the room...
That night, while watching television with his older brother, the 3-year-old started playing with his penis, pulling it forward with both hands and letting go. "Mr. Gary do it," he said and kept at it. His brother ran for their mother, who was talking to a neighbor in the front doorway. Trying to keep her voice calm, Joyce asked her son what he was talking about.
The child's reply was terse and grim. "He touched my penis with his hand, and he bit my penis." The boy made a chomping sound with his mouth. Asked if "Mr. Gary" had done anything else, the boy said, "He put a pencil in my hole in my bottom. He do that, he do that to me. He hurt me and I cry and I cry."...
CASARC reviews more than 700 cases of suspected sexual abuse every year. Among other things, the CASARC staff had often heard children describe anal rape as having a pencil put in their bottoms. When Dr. Kevin Coulter examined the Tobins' son, he observed that the child's anus dilated to approximately 20 millimeters in approximately five seconds, a much faster and wider dilation than normal. Coulter had conducted more than 300 examinations of children at CASARC. His conclusion was that such rapid and wide dilation was caused by trauma to the anus and rectum, consistent with penetration. The Tobins' 3-year-old son had been sexually abused, anally raped.
...it took the Army almost a month to notify the parents of other children who had been in "Mr. Gary's' class that the incident had taken place, that their children might be at risk. Nearly a year would pass before more than 59 other victims children between the ages of 3 and 7 had been identified. And allegations would be made by parents that several more children were molested even after the investigation had begun.
...The children had begun to talk. And they kept talking. That was the problem. They kept saying things that no one, especially not the Army, wanted to hear. They kept mentioning other people besides "Mr. Gary," other locations besides the day care center. Among the allegations:
Some of the children said they were taken from the day care center to private homes on the Presidio where they were sexually abused. Two houses were singled out on the Army post and at least one home off-post, in San Francisco.
One girl said she played "poopoo baseball" at the home of one of her female teachers. The girl said the game involved throwing feces at the teacher.
Other children talked about playing the "googoo game" with "Mr. Gary". It involved Hambright having the children urinate and defecate on him. Then he would do the same to them. Sometimes, the children said, they were forced to drink urine and eat feces. Some said they had blood smeared on their bodies.
Some children said they had guns pointed at them. Others said they were told they or their parents would be killed if they told what happened.
One 3-year-old boy said he was sexually abused on his first visit to the center. That day was also his birthday.
A 3-year-old girl said "Mr. Gary" used special pens, black, blue, pink and red -- to doodle on her, starting at her legs and moving up over her genitals. The same child said she saw one of her friends at the center cry when "Mr. Gary's" friend, a woman, pointed a gun at the friend.
There were five confirmed cases of chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease, including two of the four daughters of one family.
A preliminary test of one boy for AIDS came back positive. Further tests revealed that a he did not have the disease, but fear of AIDS tormented parents for months. .
...The core group of parents consisted of professional people doctors, a dentist, a nuclear scientist. They spoke out loud and often. They said they spoke for those who could not, the children and the enlisted people who, they said, were too afraid to risk their military career to speak out. The enlisted people needed their jobs and the day care. The core group could afford day care elsewhere.
...NONE OF THE PARENTS WHO WERE PROTESTING the Army's handling of the case knew that signs of trouble had surfaced at the center at least six years earlier. And none of them knew that the Army had been dealing with sex abuse problems at its day care centers for years before the Presidio case broke.
The Army said nothing of prior cases at West Point and Fort Dix. The Army said nothing of an investigation six years before involving John Gunnarson, the Presidio's top day care official and the supervisor of the day care center during the time Hambright allegedly molested the children.
In 1982, Gunnarson was child support services coordinator at the center, responsible for the training of the center staff, when he was arrested on charges of assaulting an employee of the center, Pearl Broadnax. Broadnax had been complaining about conditions at the center and treatment of the children. She say she was branded a troublemaker and often called to task about her job performance. On Feb. 3, 1982, she and Gunnarson argued over the use of scissors by the children. He asked her to go into another room to continue the discussion, but Broadnax said she wanted to remain in the playroom. "At this time," according to an investigative report of the incident, "Gunnarson grabbed Broadnax by the left arm above her wrist and pulled her toward him. She then told Gunnarson, "don't touch me," to which he replied, I'm not touching you." She felt that she was in fear of bodily harm at this point in the incident.
...Now a deputy sheriff in Santa Clara County, Albanoski called after he read one of my stories about the Presidio case. "When I read the paper, I almost fell out of my chair," Albanoski said ""I couldn't believe [Gunnarson] was still working there" While interviewing Broadnax at the day care center after she had called MPs about Gunnarson, Albanoski learned that Broadnax was concerned about more than the alleged threat of harm to herself. She also alleged that employees had touched children's genitals improperly...Broadnax also said she had seen the then director of the center hit a child in the mouth, making him bleed.
...Capt. Robert J. Meyer was appointed to look into the allegations for the commander of the Presidio in a letter summarizing his findings, Meyers said, "at least three of the Child Care Center staff have been threatened with the loss of their jobs if they speak out and tell the truth about how the Child Care Center is being managed and how the minority children are treated." A hearing was held at the Presidio on the allegations in 1981. The director in question was reinstated. more...
Friday, September 16, 2011
Conspiracy of Silence
Viewing Conspiracy of Silence, a documentary about a child prostitution ring serving high-level politicians, is absolutely necessary for understanding the material covered here, particularly regarding connections between organized child trafficking and the Roman Catholic Church. Be assured that the crimes described in the film, targeting society's most vulnerable members and supported by highly respected social institutions, continue up to the present day and will not be alleviated until the necessary task of exposure and prosecution takes place. Please help to spread the word and bring justice to those whose stories remain invisible.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Pope accused of crimes against humanity by victims of sex abuse
via:The Guardian
Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have accused the pope, the Vatican secretary of state and two other high-ranking Holy See officials of crimes against humanity, in a formal complaint to the international criminal court (ICC)...It includes individual cases of abuse where letters and documents between Vatican officials and others show a refusal to co-operate with law enforcement agencies seeking to pursue suspects, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based organisation that represents the claimants...Megan Petersen, from Minnesota, is one of two named US victims whose cases have been included in the complaint to the ICC. Petersen was awarded $750,000 (£500,000) last week in a civil claim against Crookston diocese, in which she alleged that a priest, Joseph Jeyapaul, had raped her repeatedly as a child.
Speaking at The Hague, where the complaint was being launched, Petersen said of Jeyapaul: "He was a man of God and I was very devout. I wanted to be a nun. I trusted him.
"Part of why I'm here is to protect kids. My perpetrator is still serving among kids and vulnerable adults, despite there being criminal charges against him. Ratzinger is the head of this organisation and these are his sheep, his flock. I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen to another child." more...
Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have accused the pope, the Vatican secretary of state and two other high-ranking Holy See officials of crimes against humanity, in a formal complaint to the international criminal court (ICC)...It includes individual cases of abuse where letters and documents between Vatican officials and others show a refusal to co-operate with law enforcement agencies seeking to pursue suspects, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based organisation that represents the claimants...Megan Petersen, from Minnesota, is one of two named US victims whose cases have been included in the complaint to the ICC. Petersen was awarded $750,000 (£500,000) last week in a civil claim against Crookston diocese, in which she alleged that a priest, Joseph Jeyapaul, had raped her repeatedly as a child.
Speaking at The Hague, where the complaint was being launched, Petersen said of Jeyapaul: "He was a man of God and I was very devout. I wanted to be a nun. I trusted him.
"Part of why I'm here is to protect kids. My perpetrator is still serving among kids and vulnerable adults, despite there being criminal charges against him. Ratzinger is the head of this organisation and these are his sheep, his flock. I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen to another child." more...
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Priest says he was bullied into taking fall for Pope in abuse scandal
via:The Local: Germany's News in English
The church official who initially said it was his fault that a paedophile priest was given succour in Pope Benedict XVI’s former diocese has broken ranks, alleging he was bullied into taking responsibility to protect the pontiff. Gerhard Gruber was Joseph Ratzinger’s general vicar in Munich during the 1980s, when Ratzinger, now Pope, was Archbishop.
Ratzinger chaired the meeting which decided to offer paedophile priest Peter H., a safe haven in Munich. The priest was also given further positions of trust in the church, and was later convicted of further child abuse.
Gruber’s friends have told Der Spiegel news magazine that when the story came to light last month, he was under immense pressure to take responsibility for the decision in order to shield the Pope from accusations of having helped a paedophile.
The magazine wrote that he was urgently "requested" to take full responsibility in order to take the Pope "out of the firing line."
He wrote in a letter to a friend that he had been faxed a statement that he was to make, though he had been given the opportunity to suggest changes.
more...
The church official who initially said it was his fault that a paedophile priest was given succour in Pope Benedict XVI’s former diocese has broken ranks, alleging he was bullied into taking responsibility to protect the pontiff. Gerhard Gruber was Joseph Ratzinger’s general vicar in Munich during the 1980s, when Ratzinger, now Pope, was Archbishop.
Ratzinger chaired the meeting which decided to offer paedophile priest Peter H., a safe haven in Munich. The priest was also given further positions of trust in the church, and was later convicted of further child abuse.
Gruber’s friends have told Der Spiegel news magazine that when the story came to light last month, he was under immense pressure to take responsibility for the decision in order to shield the Pope from accusations of having helped a paedophile.
The magazine wrote that he was urgently "requested" to take full responsibility in order to take the Pope "out of the firing line."
He wrote in a letter to a friend that he had been faxed a statement that he was to make, though he had been given the opportunity to suggest changes.
more...
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