News Story of the Day

Source: AAP, 31 OCT 2016, SBS.com

The child sex abuse royal commission is being urged to reject evidence from Cardinal George Pell, who has been accused of failing to stop a Melbourne pedophile priest.

Lawyers for the commission argue there are no grounds to accept Cardinal Pell's evidence that he was intentionally deceived by Catholic Education Office about abuse carried out by Doveton parish priest Peter Searson in the 1980s.

In their submission to the commission the lawyers say Cardinal Pell knew enough about child abuse claims linked to Searson to consider sacking him or, at the very least, launch an investigation.

BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, October 27, 2016  

A Brooklyn yeshiva quietly became the first Orthodox Jewish school to compensate students who claim they were molested by a teacher when it agreed to pay more than $2 million to two boys and their families in 2014 — and now it may be the first Orthodox school to default on a settlement with sex abuse victims.

BY DAVID SINGLETON / PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 27, 2016

A Roman Catholic priest from Mahwah, New Jersey, faces 40 felony counts of possessing and disseminating child pornography after investigators say he uploaded illicit files to the internet from a Wayne County apartment he referred to as his “day off place.”

By Eric Veronikis, October 21, 2016, Pennlive 

The Dauphin County District Attorney's office arrested and charged a Bishop McDevitt High School teacher with dozens of child sex abuse counts Thursday. 

Randi Lynn Zurenko, 33, of Millerstown, Perry County, is charged with 13 counts of institutional sexual assault, 153 counts of sexual abuse of children, 33 counts of unlawful contact with minors, 20 counts of dissemination of obscene material to a minor and 13 counts of corruption of minors.

BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, October 24, 2016

A former Catholic priest from Brooklyn who pleaded guilty in 2008 to sexually abusing an 8-year-old boy is up for parole — but a relative of the victim and an abuse survivors’ organization say he should remain in prison.

LILLY FOWLER, OCT 23, 2016, The Atlantic

Participants in the Church-sponsored Indian Student Placement Program have filed at least three sexual-abuse lawsuits.

Native Americans who were part of a little-known Mormon program from 1947 to the mid-1990s share much of the same story. Year after year, missionaries or other members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints approached these families and invited their children into Mormon foster homes. 

By Abigail Pesta, Women's Health INVESTIGATES: SEXUAL ASSAULT, 

Dawn Marie Basham shifted on the crinkly exam-table paper and pulled her skirt up just high enough to expose the cyst on the side of her leg, about four inches above her right knee. It was April 2014, and her regular M.D. in Delray Beach, Florida, had referred her to the doctor she was about to see so he could drain the growth. When he came in, he tugged the fabric higher, tucking it tightly between her inner thighs from behind. That’s weird, she thought. But I guess that’s what they do.

The doctor finished the procedure, then sent the nurse out of the room for bandages. He began wiping Dawn Marie’s knee; she assumed he was cleaning up the iodine. As he calmly asked the then-39-year-old singer about her work, he started dabbing her inner thighs. Her upper thighs. Her buttocks. When Dawn Marie felt his finger penetrate her vagina through her underwear, she froze. “I remember thinking: No, this cannot be.”

Michael Stone,  October 17, 2016, Patheos

What could possibly go wrong?

Denis Robert Hall, a convicted pedophile, is running for a seat on the Saskatoon Catholic school board in Canada.

Hall pleaded guilty in 1981 to two charges of having intercourse with girls aged 14-16, as well as two counts of indecent assault. Hall was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

By Martin Evans, 16 OCTOBER 2016, The Telegraph

Deutsche Welle, DW.com, October 13, 2016

Compensation will be paid to at least 422 people who were sexually and physically abused over several decades as part of a Catholic choir in Bavaria. A church and victims' representatives panel is addressing the abuse.

Hundreds of children who were sexually and physically abused over several decades at the Domspatzen, a world-famous Catholic choir in Bavaria, will be financially compensated, Regensburg Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer said on Wednesday.