News Story of the Day

By COLlive reporter, Community News Service, September 18, 2017

8 Chabad Rabbis signed onto a letter stating, "there is no need to seek rabbinic approval prior to reporting" all forms of abuse.

A group of Chabad rabbis signed a proclamation addressing abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community, alluding to its effects that have resulted in multiple deaths due to drug overdoses and suicides over the past year alone in Jewish communities.

"The existence of child sexual abuse and other forms of child abuse which occurs in some of our communities, resulting in a number of tragic suicides as well as other physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences," they wrote.

By Alison Knezevich, The Baltimore Sun, September 17, 2017

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has responded to the organizer of a petition that urged the release of personnel files of the late priest at the center of “The Keepers” documentary, saying it treated the request “very seriously” but is still declining to make the documents public.

More than 54,000 people have signed the change.org petition, which calls on church officials to release the records of A. Joseph Maskell. The priest worked as chaplain and counselor at Archbishop Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore during the 1960s and 1970s. Multiple people have accused him of sexual abuse. He denied the allegations before his death in 2001.

By JASON HOROWITZ, SEPT. 15, 2017, The New York Times

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican has recalled a high-ranking priest working as a diplomat in the Holy See’s embassy in Washington after American authorities sought to strip his immunity and potentially charge him with possession of child pornography, the Vatican said Friday.

In a statement, the Vatican said that it had been notified by the State Department on Aug. 21 of “a possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images” by a member of its diplomatic corps.

The Vatican said the priest would face an investigation and potential trial in Vatican City. But some critics saw in the Vatican’s move a reflexive step to protect its own by whisking a priest away from a justice system in a foreign land.

By Nicole Winfield and Matthew Lee , AP,  September 15, 2017, The Washington Post

VATICAN CITY — A high-ranking priest working in the Vatican’s embassy in Washington has been recalled after U.S. prosecutors asked for him to be charged there and face trial in a child pornography investigation, Vatican and U.S. officials said Friday.

The diplomat was suspected of possessing, but not producing or disseminating, child pornography including images of pre-pubescent children, a U.S. source familiar with the case said. The source was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

By Andrew Oxford, The New Mexican

As the Catholic priest sexual abuse scandal burst into the nation’s collective consciousness in the 1990s, two brothers filed lawsuits against a church order, charging that some of its members had molested them while they were growing up in Santa Fe.

By Andrew Oxford, The New Mexican

In a step toward accountability long demanded by survivors of sexual abuse at the of hands Roman Catholic clergy, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe on Tuesday released a list of 74 priests, deacons and brothers who it says have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct over the last several decades.

Erik De La Garza, September 12, 2017, Courthouse News

EDINBURG, Texas (CN) — A state judge on Monday delayed until early October the trial of the former Catholic priest charged with the 1960 murder of a South Texas beauty queen, because of scheduling conflicts with one of his attorneys.

By Jeannie Roberts, September 9, 2017, Arkansas Online

The lawyer for a female state prisoner who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a prison chaplain announced Friday that a civil-rights lawsuit has been filed against the Department of Correction, the chaplain and other officials.

Carolyn Arnett, an inmate at the McPherson Unit, said in the lawsuit that department Director Wendy Kelley and other administrators allowed "rampant" institutional failures and a culture of sexual and physical abuse that enabled former prison chaplain Kenneth Dewitt to abuse several female inmates.

Joanne McCarthy, 7 Sep 2017, New Castle Herald

THE Anglican Church has taken steps to join a Commonwealth redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse only days after a national Anglican synod was warned some clergy and lay people continue to hold on to “long discarded myths” about child sexual abuse.

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald urged the synod in Queensland to join the redress scheme, in a speech that criticised the church for the lack of a coherent national response to survivors.

The Associated Press, SEPTEMBER 08, 2017, Miami Herald

CHICAGO --  A former Chicago priest was deemed to be a sexually violent person by a Cook County judge on Friday, but whether he will be held indefinitely in a facility for sex offenders will be decided later.