News Story of the Day

By Eithne Shortall, August 27 2017, The Sunday Times

An Irish priest is at the centre of a sexual abuse scandal engulfing Latin America. Finnlugh Mac Conastair, who died in 1997, has been accused of abusing a 12-year-old boy at a prestigious school in Argentina.

Two other Irishmen are reported to have known of the abuse. The allegations are making headlines across South America and have been reported by English-language news outlets elsewhere.

By Maria Santos Bier,  August 25, 2017, Washington Post

The Rev. William M. Aitcheson was my childhood priest and my history teacher. A fervent advocate of the Confederacy, he used to joke about “Saint Robert E. Lee” in his homilies at church. When I was in middle school in the early 2000s, he taught a Civil War history class for the home-school group at my church in the small Shenandoah County town of Woodstock, Va.

He was also a former Ku Klux Klan member, who in 1982 was fined $26,000 for burning crosses in the yard of an African American family and on the grounds of two Jewish establishments — a fine he had never paid. Before that, he was charged with six cross-burnings in Maryland and with sending a threatening letter to Coretta Scott King. 

By Siddhartha Rai, 24 August 2017, Daily Mail, India

The right-wing in India is taking its fight to re-create India in its own image even further afield. 

The battle for the RSS and its many affiliated groups has moved away from the major metropolitan areas and towards the far-flung regions of the North East that are sometimes overlooked.

By James Moncur, August 24, 2017, Daily Record

Dave Sharp is the first person in Scotland to win a payment from the Catholic order – decades after he was abused at St Ninian’s residential school in Fife.

By Associated Press, August 22, 2017, Washington Post

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Latest on a New Mexico military-style Christian sect facing child abuse charges

By Joe Gyan Jr., August 21, 2017, The Advocate

A state judge refused Monday to dismiss the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge and a priest from a 2009 lawsuit by a woman who says that when she was a teenager she told the priest she was being sexually abused by a church parishioner, but he did not stop or report the alleged abuse.

By by Tom Roberts, National Catholic Reporter, August 21, 2017

ALEXANDRIA, VA. — SNAP, the organization that has become synonymous with uncovering the clergy sex abuse scandal, may be outpacing its acronym.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, established in 1988, has been at the forefront of advocating for victims of clergy abuse and at pressing for accountability by church leadership. However, it was evident at a gathering of 300 victims, advocates and supporters Aug. 11-13 in Alexandria, Virginia, that the organization is in the midst of change.

 By Olivia Rudgard, 19 AUGUST 2017, The Telegraph

The Catholic Church and local authorities have been criticised after trying to claim child sex abuse victims "consented" in a bid to avoid compensation payouts.

Lawyers who represent some of the victims have told the Sunday Telegraph that the defence is more frequently being used by private schools, religious groups and local authorities when trying to defend compensation claims.  

By Anita Wadhwani and Holly Meyer, Knoxville, Aug. 18, 2017, Tennessean

At the center of allegations that a 12-year-old boy was raped in 2015 in the locker room of an elite Brentwood Christian school are questions about how school officials respond to student misconduct.

A review of a Brentwood Academy student handbook reveals a biblical-based approach to student conduct.

BY ALMUDENA CALATRAVA, ASSOCIATED PRESS, August 18, 2017

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- The general director of an elite school founded by the Marist Brothers in Argentina has admitted he sexually abused a student 38 years ago, an official for the order said Thursday.

Gonzalo Santa Coloma, the order's official for protecting children in Buenos Aires province, told The Associated Press that Brother Angel Duples acknowledged the abuse after the order began an investigation following a report by a former student who had talked with the victim.