News Story of the Day

By Caroline Patrickis, October 17, 2017, WISTV

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - A popular Columbia church is at the center of a lawsuit claiming sex abuse - again.

By Pamela Spees, September 26, 2017, The CCR Blog

Barbara Blaine, founder and former president of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, died on Sunday, September 24, 2017. She was only 61. We are devastated by the loss of our friend and colleague.

By Rory Carroll in Los Angeles and Sam Levin in San Francisco, October 13, 2017, The Guardian

It was Harvey Weinstein’s most ambitious production. A storyline stretching over 20 years with a rotating cast of actors, multiple locations across the US and Europe, a disciplined crew of assistants, producers and fixers, savvy dealmaking, and a publicity machine like no other.

But this was not The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, The King’s Speech or any other of his films that earned more than 300 Oscar nominations.

By MIKE STUNSON AND GREG KOCHER, October 12, 2017, Lexington Herald Leader

A former associate pastor of a large Lexington church has been charged with sexual abuse of two teens, according to court records.

Reid Buchanan, who worked at St. Luke United Methodist Church from July 2016 until August of this year, was arrested Wednesday by Lexington police. Two minors accused Buchanan, 63, of touching them inappropriately multiple times, starting when they were younger, according to a complaint warrant filed in Fayette District Court.

The abuse of the youngest victim allegedly began two years ago. She didn’t come forward until a recent incident.

By Jim McDermott, October 11, 2017, America-The Jesuit Review

Living in Los Angeles and watching the cascade of horror that is the unraveling story of Hollywood uber-exec Harvey Weinstein and his abuses of women, I have had a strange sense of déjà vu. I was a seminarian studying for the priesthood in Boston in January 2002 when The Boston Globe began publishing its astonishing series of articles on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

Those reports began a lot like the Weinstein story, with allegations surrounding one man, John Geoghan, who had been committing horrific acts of abuse for decades throughout the Archdiocese of Boston.

By Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — A Roman Catholic bishop in Indonesia has resigned following reports that he had a mistress and siphoned off more than $100,000 in church funds.

By Connie Leonard, Anchor/Reporter, October 10, 2017, WAVE 3 News

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Louisville area priests convicted of molesting children in a court of law are still getting money and benefits from the Catholic Church.

What message is it sending?

Victims of priest abuse maintain that's a question parishioners should be asking their Catholic church leaders, to make sure their children and others are protected.

Priests, like Father Joseph Hemmerle, may deny heinous acts against children. "I'm innocent of all these charges," Hemmerle told a judge after being convicted by a Meade County jury.

By McKenzie Romero, Oct. 10, 2017, Desert News Utah

PROVO — When they turned to their LDS bishop as vulnerable teenagers, two young men told a judge Tuesday that they instead became victims of a sly sexual predator who isolated them from their families and left them buried beneath guilt.

Erik Hughes, 51, was sentenced to at least one and up to 20 years in prison Tuesday, ordered to serve concurrent terms of one to 15 years for two counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony, followed by a consecutive term of up to five years for witnesses tampering, a third-degree felony.

By Philip Pullella, Reuters, October 7, 2017

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Legionaries of Christ, a Catholic religious order which fell into disgrace after the discovery that its founder was a sexual abuser with a secret family, has been hit by fresh scandal with revelations that the head of its Rome seminary fathered two children.

The order said in a statement late on Friday that Father Oscar Turrion would leave the priesthood. It also released a letter by Turrion in which he asks “forgiveness for the scandal ... forgiveness for my bad example and the negative witness I have given”.