News Story of the Day
Filipino priests accused of sex abuse
‘Philippine bishops feel entitled to their silence,’ says Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org
January 29, 2025
By Paterno R. Esmaquel II
MANILA, Philippines – A US-based watchdog launched a database on Wednesday, January 29, exposing dozens of Filipino clergymen accused of sex abuse.
The database by BishopAccountability.org lists “82 priests and brothers with ties to the Philippines who have been publicly accused of sexually abusing minors.”
BishopAccountability.org is a research group founded in 2003 that maintains the largest online library of sex abuse cases involving Catholic priests. The database launched on Wednesday is the first publicly known list of Philippine-related cases. It is now available and accessible to the public.
The new database includes the following:
- “Filipino priests accused of sexually abusing minors in the Philippines”
- “Filipino priests who served part of their priesthood in the Philippines but who are accused of sexually abusing minors while working in the US”
- “Accused clergy from other countries – specifically, the United States, Ireland, and Australia – who served part of their priesthood in the Philippines”
“The theme today really is about the deep sense of entitlement by Philippine bishops to withhold information from the public,” said BishopAccountability.org co-director Anne Barrett Doyle in a press conference at the University Hotel of the University of the Philippines Diliman in Quezon City.
Indiana lawsuit: Archdiocese, diocese, Catholic school, staff failed to report pornography manipulated to resemble students
Liebgp / Wikimedia Commons
January 27, 2025
By Hannah Hiester
CV NEWS FEED // The parents of four female high school students are suing an Indiana Catholic school, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, and school employees they claim failed to notify police about pornography created by students that exploited their daughters.
Local NBC affiliate WTHR reported that three male students at Bishop Luers High School in Fort Wayne searched online for explicit images and videos of girls and women who resembled several of their female classmates. They then created pornographic montages that superimposed their female classmates’ names over the explicit content. According to the Jan. 21 complaint, the male students used the names of 38 former and current female students, most of whom were minors at the time.
They then began selling and distributing the videos to other students at Bishop Luers and surrounding high schools. According to the complaint, the videos were also potentially circulating on the internet, “such that any on-line search of the [victims’ names] could yield a search result that included these shocking videos and images.”
The complaint stated that the pornography could have begun circulating as early as 2022. One of the girls victimized by the content discovered one of the videos Sept. 19, 2023, and brought it to the school’s attention.
However, the complaint alleges that James Huth, who was then the principal at Bishop Luers; Kevin Mann, who is dean of students and athletic director at the school; and David Maugel, who was assistant superintendent and then acting superintendent of schools within the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, had known about the videos as early as February 2023. They allegedly failed to report the pornography to the authorities, the school board, and the victims’ parents, violating an Indiana code that mandates reporting child abuse.
Once powerful Peru cardinal denies allegations of sexual abuse
ROME – Peruvian Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani has denied a report that alleges he sexually abused a minor in the 1980s, calling the accusations false, but acknowledged that restrictions were placed on his ministry.
On Saturday, Jan. 25, the influential Spanish newspaper El Pais published an article titled, “The first cardinal of Opus Dei, archbishop of Lima, was removed by the pope in 2019 after accusations of pedophilia.”
Fort Kent woman sues Jehovah’s Witnesses, alleging child sex abuse
Shannon Simendinger, 45, previously testified against one religious leader in a criminal trial 2 years ago. He was found guilty of sexual assault.
Shannon Simendinger, at age 9, holding her cat. Simendinger says she was abused by several people within the Jehovah’s Witnesses church in Fort Kent as a child in the 1990s. Photo courtesy of Shannon Simendinger
January 24, 2025
By Emily Allen
While she was growing up in Fort Kent in the late 1980s, the local congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses was Shannon Simendinger’s world.
“When that’s all you know, you get close to the people and they become your family,” Simendinger said in a phone interview Thursday. “You get attached to them, and trust them.”
But it wasn’t just tight-knit — Simendinger feels now that she was isolated, discouraged from speaking with people outside her religion. That includes the time that Simendinger said she tried to get help after she was sexually abused by her religious leaders.
“I never put anything that happened behind me. It was always there, I just had to suppress my feelings in order to function,” Simendinger said. “You weren’t allowed to bring it up in the organization. You had to keep quiet, to move along like it never happened.”
Simendinger, now 45, filed a civil complaint in Aroostook County Superior Court this month against the Fort Kent Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation, as well as the national nonprofit that oversees all Jehovah’s Witnesses, known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
Seton Hall renews support for school president in wake of POLITICO report
Joseph Reilly was highlighted in an internal investigation on abuse — and then named to lead the university.
Monsignor Joseph R. Reilly is Seton Hall University president. | Seton Hall University via PRWeb
January 23, 2025
By Dustin Racioppi
Seton Hall University is vigorously defending its new president after POLITICO reported he was implicated in a secret report on sexual abuse.
The findings about Monsignor Joseph Reilly prompted calls for his resignation in recent weeks from state lawmakers, and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy urged the Catholic university to release its internal report on Reilly.
But in a university-wide email on Thursday, the chair of Seton Hall’s Board of Regents said the university’s governing board “continues to stand by” its president.
Sodality of Christian Life reports it made reparations to 83 victims of abuse
By Eduardo Berdejo for CNA
Lima Newsroom, Jan 22, 2025 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
The Sodality of Christian Life has reported that between May 2016 and December 2024 it provided reparations to 83 people who were victims of sexual, psychological, and power abuse through out-of-court settlements.
According to the report published Tuesday on its website, of the total number of cases given reparations, 15 were for the sexual abuse of minors between ages 11 and 17, 18 were for the sexual abuse of adults, and 50 were for other types of abuse.
Canada seeks to dismiss St. Anne's residential school survivors' fight for accountability
Court battle continues over withholding of documents detailing abuse at Ontario residential school
· CBC News · Posted: Jan 21, 2025 5:27 PM EST | Last Updated: January 21
Advocate Edmund Metatawabin speaks during a news conference in Ottawa in 2013 seeking justice for St. Anne's Indian Residential School survivors. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Federal lawyers are asking a court to dismiss a group of survivors' fight to hold Canada accountable for withholding evidence of widespread abuse at St. Anne's Indian Residential School during class-action compensation hearings.
The decade-old legal saga continues this week in Ontario Superior Court in Toronto, where former pupils of the notorious Catholic-run school in Fort Albany are responding to the government.
Faced with mainly technical arguments, Edmund Metatawabin, a former Fort Albany First Nation chief who is leading the fight, said his group is used to such tactics but continues to press for truth.
Archdiocese of Chicago removes 2 priests from ministry after sex abuse allegations
Holy Name Cathedral in the Archdiocese of Chicago. | Credit: Edlane De Mattos/Shutterstock
January 20, 2025
By Daniel Payne
The Archdiocese of Chicago has removed two priests from active ministry as it investigates sex abuse allegations leveled against both of them.
The archdiocese announced the development on Saturday, writing to 14 different parishes at which the two priests, Father Matthew Foley and Father Henry Kricek, served over a series of years.
The allegation against Foley involved claims of abuse when he was assigned to St. Agatha Parish (now renamed St. Simon of Cyrene Parish) “approximately 30 years ago,” the archdiocese said, while those against Kricek concerned alleged abuse at St. John Bosco Parish “approximately 40 years ago.”
Both allegations involved abuse of a minor, the archdiocese said. Both priests have been removed from ministry while the archdiocese investigates the claims.
French Catholic Church Calls for Probe Into Late Priest Abbe Pierre’s Alleged Sexual Abuse
PARIS (FRANCE)
Reuters [London, England]
January 17, 2025
By Juliette Jabkhiro
France’s Catholic Church called on prosecutors on Friday to open a probe into sexual assault accusations against the late French priest Abbe Pierre, who was a lifelong campaigner for the poor and homeless, and potential cover-ups of such abuse.
Henri-Antoine Groues, better known as Abbe Pierre, was a Roman Catholic priest who renounced wealth to campaign for the homeless and was once one of France’s most revered figures. He died in 2007, aged 94.
SC high court rules Charleston Catholic Diocese can be sued in 1970s abuse case
Jan 17, 2025
COLUMBIA — South Carolina's high court has ruled an alleged victim of sexual abuse within the Catholic Diocese of Charleston in the 1970s can pursue their case against the church after it tried to claim immunity under a long-defunct state law protecting charitable organizations from legal action.
The years-old case, filed in August 2018, alleged a John Doe was sexually abused as a junior high school student by two now-deceased employees of the diocese's Sacred Heart Catholic School in 1969 and 1971.
In addition to relief for the sexual abuse and emotional distress that resulted from the incident, the plaintiff also accused the diocese of gross negligence in relation to the incident along with a bevy of other charges ranging from fraudulent concealment and civil conspiracy to a breach of contract.
