Media Statements

Along with three other survivors, Rose Wiseman accused Fr. Joaquin Resma of child sexual abuse in a lawsuit. That case was settled out of court, but another one has recently been filed alleging abuse by the priest. Rose's parish, Our Lady of Health in Las Cruces, New Mexico, belonged to the Diocese of El Paso at the time, but became a part of the Diocese of Las Cruces in 1982. Fr. Resma is not included on the lists of "credibly accused" clergy from either Diocese.

Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley has initiated a Church investigation into allegations that New Hampshire Bishop Peter Libasci groped an altar boy decades ago. The accusations stem from a lawsuit filed against Bishop Libasci in New York under the Child Victims Act. The complaint says that the victim was a 12-13-year-old boy in the mid-1980s when then-Father Libasci worked as a parish priest in Long Island.

Bishop Laurie Haller, head of the Iowa Area of the United Methodist Church, sent a message to parishes in the state to stop chartering Boy Scouts troops because of child sex abuse lawsuits by former scouts. This directive is intended to shield the churches from further liability since it has been discovered that the Boy Scouts of America do not have sufficient insurance to cover sponsoring parishes. In 2020, more than 3,000 United Methodist churches chartered over 9,000 scouting units serving more than 300,000 youth, according to United Methodist Men, which oversees the denomination’s scouting ministries.

According to an analysis by The Buffalo News, Child Victims Act lawsuits accused 230 local Catholic clergy of sexually abusing vulnerable and unsuspecting children over the past 75 years. The complaints covered nearly every parish in the Diocese. Since 1950, more than 2,300 priests have been assigned to the Buffalo Diocese. By our accounting, that indicates that about 10% of the ordained in the Diocese were abusive. That is nearly double what the Catholic Church acknowledged in 2004. 

Mark William Heotzler was a youth pastor at Grace Chapel Community Church in Hermitage, Pennsylvania, from May 2014 to April of 2019. He is accused of a total of 53child sex crimes from between 2015 and 2021, including making sexual advances towards minors and sending inappropriate images by text and through social media to individuals under the age of 18. The criminal complaint alleges that Heotlzler made sexual contact with a 15-year-old boy. The former youth pastor is already a registered sex offender in Pennsylvania, following a guilty plea on March 4 to unlawful obscene contact with a minor. He is currently in jail on that charge.

We applaud the courageous woman who has filed the lawsuit in this case alleging repeated sexual assaults at the hands of a former water polo coach at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School. The survivor has named the coach, the school, and the Archbishop of Chicago as defendants. We believe that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops should mandate that all of those accused of abuse in Church institutions - whether clergy or lay - should be included on the diocesan lists. 

The complaint alleges that the abuse occurred while the victim was a student at McAuley between 2012-2016. She was only 13 when she first met the coach. False accusations of child sexual abuse are extremely rare, so we believe this woman. Since the allegations are recent, we hope that local law enforcement will open their own investigation, subpoena or seize school and Archdiocesan records, and urge anyone who experienced, witnessed, or suspected the coach of abuse to come forward.

Two Virginia school administrators are facing charges after choosing not to report to police allegations of sexual abuse that had been levied against their school's volleyball coach. We applaud the filing of these charges and are grateful that police and prosecutors are sending a message to others who might ignore or conceal allegations of child sex crimes.

According to the New York state electronic filing system, a lawsuit was filed in October of 2019 by Victor Petit-Phare against the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, St. Jerome’s School and Church, and Bishop Guy A. Sansaricq. The complaint accused Bishop Sansaricq of child sexual abuse while he was a priest at St. Jerome’s in the early 1990s.  As best we can tell, the Diocese never uttered a single word about the allegations against the Bishop.

We know that false allegations of child sexual abuse are extremely rare, and we stand with Victor. It is wrong for Catholic officials, who the whole world now knows have shielded abusive clerics in the past, to withhold information that would help other victims to find the courage to come forward rather than to sit alone and in the silence.  Child sex abuse accusations should be made public as quickly and broadly as possible. Otherwise, perpetrators are given the chance to rally support, intimidate survivors, abuse others, threaten witnesses, discredit whistleblowers, destroy evidence, fabricate alibis, and even to flee the country.

On August 18, Bishop LaTrelle Easterling of the United Methodist Church shared with parishioners in the denomination’s Baltimore-Washington Conference that Rev. Mark Schaefer had his clergy credentials removed following allegations of "clergy sexual misconduct." To us, this notification definitely falls under the category of far too little, way too late.

In her email, the Bishop acknowledged that in 2019 she received an allegation against Rev. Schaefer, a campus minister and university chaplain at American University in Washington, DC, at the time. The Reverend appears to have admitted that he groomed and sexually abused a University student, since the denomination required him to disclose his misconduct to American University, undergo six months of psychological assessment and counseling, and complete three years of probation. However, Fr. Schaeffer retained his clergy credentials, with the understanding that any additional violations "could" result in surrendering his credentials. The following year, two more American students came forward to file formal complaints, and Rev. Schaefer, admitting the allegations, at last surrendered his license.