News Story of the Day

On the heels of the conviction of a high-ranking Catholic church official, veteran attorneys and a victims' advocate encourage childhood sexual abuse victims to speak up.

Be silent no more.

In January, Indian Country Today Media Network reported that a Yakima, Washington–based law firm had filed a 12-page legal complaint on behalf of a Northern Cheyenne tribal member seeking justice for years of abuse she suffered as a child at Montana’s St. Labre Indian School in the 1950s and 1960s. The case is a significant one, as the accused is Father Emmett Hoffmann, a near-legendary figure on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

Outside their own circles, they're mostly unknown — and certainly not referred to as Victim No. … But other child sex-abuse victims across Pennsylvania are just as entitled to justice as those whose accusations were heard in the sensational trials of a former college football coach and a high-ranking Catholic Church official.

LONG BEACH — A catholic priest from a Long Beach church was arrested this week on suspicion of sexually assaulting two women and a teenage girl, police announced Tuesday.

PHILADELPHIA — Msgr. William J. Lynn, the first Roman Catholic official in the United States to be convicted of covering up sexual abuses by priests under his supervision, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on Tuesday.

The leading voice for victims of the Catholic priest abuse scandal Monday blasted the "unprecedented" punishments layered on Penn State today by the NCAA for 13 years of knowingly failing to safeguard children from Jerry Sandusky.

CONNECTICUT, USA, Friday July 20, 2012 – A former pupil of a school for disadvantaged youth in Cap-Haitien, Haiti has joined 22 other former students in filing a lawsuit against a Jesuit priest now living in Massachusetts, and others, alleging the defendants did nothing to prevent the school’s former director from sexually abusing them over a 10-year period.

Since the sickening news broke last November of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Penn State University ex-assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the similarities with the clerical sexual abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have been painfully apparent.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A longtime Columbus priest is off the job, placed on leave by the Diocese after an allegation of sexual abuse. Rev. Thomas Brosmer has been a priest for more than 40 years. Most recently, he served as the associate pastor at St. Cecelia Church on the city’s far west side.

Penn State's independent probe into the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal found "the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State.