News Story of the Day

LILLY FOWLER, OCT 23, 2016, The Atlantic

Participants in the Church-sponsored Indian Student Placement Program have filed at least three sexual-abuse lawsuits.

Native Americans who were part of a little-known Mormon program from 1947 to the mid-1990s share much of the same story. Year after year, missionaries or other members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints approached these families and invited their children into Mormon foster homes. 

By Abigail Pesta, Women's Health INVESTIGATES: SEXUAL ASSAULT, 

Dawn Marie Basham shifted on the crinkly exam-table paper and pulled her skirt up just high enough to expose the cyst on the side of her leg, about four inches above her right knee. It was April 2014, and her regular M.D. in Delray Beach, Florida, had referred her to the doctor she was about to see so he could drain the growth. When he came in, he tugged the fabric higher, tucking it tightly between her inner thighs from behind. That’s weird, she thought. But I guess that’s what they do.

The doctor finished the procedure, then sent the nurse out of the room for bandages. He began wiping Dawn Marie’s knee; she assumed he was cleaning up the iodine. As he calmly asked the then-39-year-old singer about her work, he started dabbing her inner thighs. Her upper thighs. Her buttocks. When Dawn Marie felt his finger penetrate her vagina through her underwear, she froze. “I remember thinking: No, this cannot be.”

Michael Stone,  October 17, 2016, Patheos

What could possibly go wrong?

Denis Robert Hall, a convicted pedophile, is running for a seat on the Saskatoon Catholic school board in Canada.

Hall pleaded guilty in 1981 to two charges of having intercourse with girls aged 14-16, as well as two counts of indecent assault. Hall was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

By Martin Evans, 16 OCTOBER 2016, The Telegraph

Deutsche Welle, DW.com, October 13, 2016

Compensation will be paid to at least 422 people who were sexually and physically abused over several decades as part of a Catholic choir in Bavaria. A church and victims' representatives panel is addressing the abuse.

Hundreds of children who were sexually and physically abused over several decades at the Domspatzen, a world-famous Catholic choir in Bavaria, will be financially compensated, Regensburg Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer said on Wednesday.

By Travis Andersen, GLOBE STAFF, OCTOBER 12, 2016

Advocates for sexual abuse victims on Tuesday called for the removal of a top official in the Greek Orthodox church in New England, alleging he was “at least grossly negligent” in supervising a priest who was convicted last year of assaulting a boy in Maine.

Verne E. Paradie, a lawyer for the victim in the Maine case, said in a statement that Rev. Father Theodore J. Barbas, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, had an “ethical duty to ensure that this [convicted] priest ... was not a predator.”

By KENNETH LOVETT, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ALBANY BUREAU CHIEF,  October 10, 2016

ALBANY — State Senate Democrats are expected to make passage of a bill making it easier for child sex abuse victims to seek justice as adults one of their first priorities if they win the majority this fall.

Several Democrats say they expect the Child Victims Act will be among the first bills passed if the Democrats take control of the chamber.

Keri Blakinger, October 9, 2016, Chron

When Michael Norris was 11, he got a bad case of poison ivy at summer camp - a pretty normal childhood experience.

But that normal experience turned into lasting trauma when a Catholic priest working as a counselor at the all-boys camp invited the Kentucky pre-teen back to his cabin to "treat" the outbreak - and instead molested him, Norris alleges.

Philly.com, October 6, 2016

The Pennsylvania Senate can redeem itself by supporting a bill it earlier gutted that would expand both the criminal and civil statutes of limitation on child sex abuse. The legislation would allow pedophilia victims who were assaulted years ago to sue institutions that protected their abusers for decades.

The House is expected to pass its original bill and send it to the Senate before it recesses for the November election.