News Story of the Day
Editorial: Hold clergy to duty to report child abuse
Teachers, health care providers and others must report suspected abuse. Clergy should as well.
Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle. (Washington State Standard)
March 5, 2025
By The Herald Editorial Board
There are few areas of lawmaking as fraught with the competing tensions between rights and responsibilities than those involving religion, a necessary result of the constitutional freedom that the First Amendment guarantees for Americans’ exercise of faith.
That tension between rights and responsibilities has been on painful display this legislative session as state lawmakers again consider a bill that would add clergy to the list of those who are considered mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect.
State law outlines an extensive list of people — with varying levels of contact with children — who are required to report child abuse or neglect to law enforcement or the state’s Department of Children, Youth and Families. Among those mandatory reporters are teachers, coaches and other school employees, law enforcement, health care providers, counselors, guardians and others.
Washington state, however, is one of only five states that does not require mandatory reporting for members of the clergy. Efforts in the Legislature to include clergy as reporters go back several years, but most recently with proposals from state Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, who has identified herself as a victim or child sexual abuse.
Seton Hall failed to disclose key report to lawyers in Catholic abuse lawsuit
The 2019 report, which says the university’s president didn’t properly report allegations, could become public in a separate church abuse case.
A state Superior Court judge in Essex County, New Jersey, has ordered Seton Hall to produce the 2019 report and related documents to her by Feb. 19, but the school is fighting to keep it all private. | Julio Cortez/AP
Seton Hall University has ignored calls by New Jersey’s governor, three state lawmakers and a member of Congress to release a report critical of its new president’s failure to report allegations in a major sexual abuse scandal more than five years ago.
Now it could be a judge who forces the storied Catholic university’s hand.
French clergy acknowledge responsibility in school sexual abuse scandal
The Congregation of the Fathers of Bétharram has acknowledged responsibility in widespread sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school it oversees near the town of southwestern town of Pau, where Prime Minister François Bayrou has been mayor since 2014. Meanwhile a prosecutor has dismissed complaints alleging Bayrou failed to act on the abuse when he was education minister in the 1990s.
Issued on: 04/03/2025 - 15:26
RFI
Since last year, police have received more than 150 complaints of violence, sexual assault and rape against former religious figures and lay personnel at the Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram boarding school. The alleged abuse occurred between the 1950s and 2010's.
A judicial investigation was opened on 21 February for rape and sexual assault. Only one of the three men placed in police custody was indicted – the other two benefiting from the statute of limitations, some dating back 70 years.
Rupnik and his companions occupy convent near Rome. Cardinal De Donatis is director
The convent of Montefiolo, in Sabina, where the Pope's former Vicar for Rome has built a luxurious apartment, will become the new headquarters of the former Jesuits of the Aletti Centre. With the relative expulsion of the nuns who live there. Our report.
March 3, 2025
By Riccardo Cascioli and Luisella Scrosati
With the collaboration of Patricia Gooding Williams
"The nuns have gone out, there's nobody here at the moment, I'm just passing through and can't let you in," answers a woman's voice over the intercom. "But can't we just visit the church and the grounds, we’ve heard it's beautiful?" we ask. "No, there's no one here. But we know there are priests... Silence, the conversation abruptly ends. It's Thursday 27 February, and we're standing outside the large metal gate of the convent of the Benedictine Sisters of Priscilla in Montefiolo, in the municipality of Casperia, a small village in the Sabina hills, in the province of Rieti.
We came here because we had been told that Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, the former Jesuit expelled from the Order and accused of the serious sexual abuse of women and nuns, has been residing here for several weeks. Not only that, but he is together with other former Jesuits from the Aletti Centre, once the headquarters of Rupnik and his followers until the abuse scandal broke.
Montefiolo is just a hilltop and the only building is the ancient, majestic convent, which originally belonged to the Capuchin Friars.
It was bought and restored in 1935 by Monsignor Giulio Belvederi. The then Secretary of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology opened the monastery to a group of women who wished to lead a religious life and who, in 1936, founded the Benedictine Oblates Regular of Priscilla, later to join the Benedictine Congregation. But now, shrouded in a mysterious conspiracy, it is passing into the hands of the small group of former Jesuits, favoured by its location. In fact, surrounded by a high wall and a wood, which separates it from the main road, it is an perfect residence for those who wish to live in secrecy.
Man sexually abused by priest at Irvine Catholic primary school awarded £627,000 in damages
3 Mar 2025
By Mitchell Skilling
A man who was sexually abused by a priest at a Roman Catholic primary school when he was five or six and developed Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of that and other abuse has been awarded £627,000 in damages by the Outer House of the Court of Session.
The anonymous pursuer, F, argued that significant weight ought to be ascribed to his experiences at the school in assessment of damages. The action came to proceed solely against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galloway, originally convened as second defender, which argued that other abuse the pursuer suffered later in life was an equal contributor to his mental health issues.
The case was heard by Lord Clark. Milligan KC and McCaffery, advocate, appeared for the pursuer and Primrose KC and Rolfe, advocate, for the second defender.
Washington Senate passes bill to make clergy mandatory reporters of child abuse
Lawmakers on the floor of the Washington state Senate in Olympia. (Photo by Albert James)
February 28, 2025
By Albert James
The state Senate passed a bill Friday afternoon to make religious leaders mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect. Supporters say the move is crucial to protecting children from harm, especially sexual abuse, while opponents argue the bill could end up doing more harm.
Senate Bill 5375 would make “members of the clergy” mandatory reporters like doctors, teachers and other people who work with kids. Under the law, religious leaders would be required to tell law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families if they suspect any harm has been done to a child. They must do so even if they learned that information during a confession or other penitential communication.
This is the third time in recent years that making clergy mandatory reporters has been attempted, with exemptions for reporting information learned in confession being a sticking point in the past.
Spain's Catholic Church Says Abuse Victim Fund Started
Feb 27, 2025, 12:16 pm EST
Spain's Catholic Church, long criticised for lacking transparency about its handling of sexual abuse committed on its watch, on Thursday said its contested scheme to compensate victims had started.
Pressure on the Spanish Church to compensate victims amplified after a damning 2023 report estimated that Roman Catholic clergy and lay people sexually abused more than 400,000 minors since 1940.
The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), which groups the country's leading bishops, presented its own compensation plan last year but without providing details on when or how it would be implemented.
CEE secretary general Francisco Cesar Garcia Magan told reporters the plan "is working... cases presented by congregations, by dioceses or directly by victims are being handled".
Abuse reported to church 17 years before police told
Anthony Pierce, pictured in 2002, admitted five counts of historical indecent assaults earlier this month
By Emilia Belli
BBC News
An allegation of sexual abuse against a priest who went on to become a bishop appears to have been reported to "senior figures" in the church 17 years before it was passed to police.
The alleged victim of Anthony Pierce, believed to have been under 18 at the time, had died by the time the church contacted the police in 2010.
This meant the allegation of sexual assault made in 1993 could not be investigated. It only came to light after the former bishop of Swansea and Brecon admitted five counts of indecent assault on a child in another case.
Church of England eyes disciplining clergy over child abuse scandal
By Reuters
February 25, 20259:51 AM EST Updated 32 min ago
Feb 25 (Reuters) - The Church of England will seek to bring disciplinary proceedings against 10 clerics including former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, it said on Tuesday, implementing recommendations from an abuse report last year.
The CoE, central to 85 million Anglicans worldwide, has been in crisis over safeguarding the vulnerable since the November report, which said ex-leader Justin Welby had taken insufficient action to stop one of the church's most prolific serial abusers. Welby eventually stepped down over the findings.
Eight priests and a former bishop were also listed among those potentially facing disciplinary action in the CoE statement as the CoE concluded its own independent review into all clergy criticised in last year's report.
That report found that the late John Smyth, a British lawyer who volunteered at Christian summer camps, subjected more than 100 boys and young men to "brutal and horrific" physical and sexual abuse over a 40-year period.
SPJ NORCAL HONORS TRANSPARENCY CHAMPIONS IN JAMES MADISON FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AWARDS
February 12, 2025
Media contacts: Thomas Peele (510) 499-4944 | Laura Wenus (650) 996-3112 | [email protected]
SAN FRANCISCO – The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announces its 40th Annual James Madison Freedom of Information Awards, recognizing people and organizations who have made significant contributions to advancing freedom of information and expression in the spirit of James Madison, the creative force behind the First Amendment.
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Citizen
Dan McNevin, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP)
While navigating his own healing journey after being abused as an altar boy, Dan McNevin spent years compiling a list of hundreds of Bay Area Catholic priests and other clergy accused of sexual abuse.
McNevin and other members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests combed through court filings, news reports and church documents. While some local dioceses have released internal lists of suspected abusers, McNevin’s work shows how incomplete those disclosures are. In Oakland, McNevin’s list is more than three times as long as the list of alleged abusers published by the Bishop. And in San Francisco, where Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has steadfastly refused to name accused priests within the Archdiocese, McNevin’s list has filled that void.
McNevin’s advocacy helped lead to a vast body of investigative work by local reporters in 2024. The reporting holds California dioceses accountable for how they have handled the child sexual abuse scandal. His work fighting for the public’s right to know has also shown other survivors they aren’t alone, in many cases leading survivors to realize they were not the only victims of a certain priest.
To read about the others honored by the Society of Professional Journalists - Northern California, go here.
