News Story of the Day

LONDON —Roman Catholic bishops in the Netherlands said Friday they offered “sincere apologies” to victims of sexual mistreatment, hours after a report by an official commission said church officials had “failed to adequately deal with” abuse, including rape, affecting as many as 20,000 Dutch children in Catholic institutions.

A no-bail bench warrant was issued Wednesday for a former Salinas priest accused of violating his probation terms, including failing to register as a sex offender, following his release from jail, the Monterey County District Attorney's Office said.

A national furor over sexual misconduct by college athletic coaches may offer at least one collateral benefit: Experts say hidden victims are being stirred to step forward and press charges against sports and athletic mentors, thereby protecting others from abuse.

New York state lawmakers said the announcement on Wednesday that a former Syracuse University coach will not face sex abuse charges because the statute of limitations had run out could boost efforts to reform state child abuse laws.

The former Syracuse assistant men’s basketball coach Bernie Fine cannot be prosecuted for allegations that he sexually abused two boys in the 1980s because the statute of limitations had run out, William Fitzpatrick, the district attorney for Onondaga County, N.Y., said Wednesday. But Fitzpatrick added that he believed the men who accused Fine were telling the truth about the abuse.

Don and Rosemary Teeman were waiting in the parking lot when Jon David Couzens drove up.

Couzens sat in his van, trying to summon the strength to open the door. The Teemans’ son had committed suicide 28 years earlier. The night before last, Couzens had told them that their son was sexually abused by a priest before taking his life.

Arizona’s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R) spends a lot of time playing politics and apparently no time doing his actual job. The AP reports that, over a three-year period ending in 2007, Arpaio “inadequately investigated” or in some instances didn’t even work more than 400 sex-crimes reported to his office. The cases “include dozens of alleged child molestations.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Star and the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have targeted a psychiatrist who evaluated a priest now facing criminal charges in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo.

Before break, I drew a cartoon suggesting that the Penn State football program had been reading out of the Catholic Church's playbook. Two letters expressed outrage at the comparison, and said that the cartoon was harmful to the victims. A student wrote, " It is time to honor and respect the victims of these terrible actions by putting the actions behind us so that they can move on with their lives without fear of being linked to current crimes."

An extraordinary legal drama is the talk of the town this week, but unlike most of what transpires in the American criminal justice system, this exclusive engagement was just for VIPs.