News Story of the Day

Todd Melby · May 25, 2016, MPR News

As a kid, Jon Landstrom spent hours in the pool churning out lap after lap. His dedication paid off when he won a spot on the Roseville Stingrays, an elite regional swim team.

But an encounter with an assistant swim coach would change how he felt about going to the pool.

"He wanted to have his hands on me," Landstrom recalled. "Even if it was in front of people, he wanted to pet me or have his hands on me."

Gaynor Dumat-ol Daleno, Pacific Daily News, May 23, 2016

Legislation introduced Monday morning would lift any time limit on filing lawsuits against alleged child molesters, a move that could cast Guam into a decades-old debate in the nation about the constitutionality of applying new laws to past crimes.

Sen. Frank F. Blas Jr.’s Bill 326 states: “victims of child sexual abuse that occurred on Guam who have been barred from filing suit against their abusers by virtue of the expiration of the civil statute of limitations shall be permitted to file those claims in the Guam Superior Court.”

By David Gibson  and Tom Heneghan May 20, 2016

(RNS) For years, seminaries and monasteries around France sent students and novices to Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a prominent French priest and therapist who has written disparagingly of gays, if their superiors decided the young men were struggling with homosexuality.

By SIMON THOMSEN, MAY 11, 2016, Business Insider Australia

Senior Vatican official cardinal George Pell has been photographed enjoying steak and chips and a beer in a Rome restaurant just weeks after he said he was too ill to return to Australia to face the royal commission into child abuse in the Catholic church.

Two months ago, the Vatican’s financial boss, who turns 75 in June, gave three days of testimony to the commission via videolink from Rome.

Pell had a medical report that said travel to Australia could cause heart failure and, following his testimony, revealed that he had angioplasty and was fitted with a pacemaker “both provoked by travel to Australia”.

By Catie L'Heureux, May 9, 2016, Boston Globe

In a new report, the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team paints a horrifying portrait of the reality of sexual abuse in New England private schools. Thereport itself is an important read, providing a 25-year history of the issue and prompting a breakdown of the most sobering statistics here. It's worth noting that besides these findings, there is currently no database of allegations against private-school employees (and limited research on sex abuse in public schools).

By Chris Vedelago, Beau Donelly, Cameron Houston, May 7, 2016, The Age, Victoria

The Catholic Church is allowing paedophile priests to live anonymously in the community with limited supervision and has ignored warnings about their misconduct.

The Sunday Age can also reveal one of Victoria's top Catholic officials, Bishop Les Tomlinson, has conducted mass alongside a priest banned from public ministry for committing acts of sexual abuse.

An investigation into the Melbourne archdiocese's program for managing sex offenders within its ranks has found:

May 6, 2016, CBS New York

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. (CBS NewYork) — The Diocese of Rockville Centre was under fire Friday for not removing a priest who is the subject of sexual abuse lawsuits.

As WCBS 880’s Sophia Hall reported, there are two lawsuits accusing the Rev. Gregory Yacyshyn of sexually abusing a girl and a boy decades ago.

By Olivier Uyttebrouck / Journal Staff Writer, Updated: Thursday, May 5th, 2016, Albuquerque Journal

After nearly a quarter of a century on the lam, a priest who helped ignite the clerical sex abuse crisis in New Mexico in the 1990s has turned up in Morocco, working at an English-language school for children, an Albuquerque attorney said.

Arthur Perrault, who vanished from his Albuquerque parish in 1992, was served last month with a civil lawsuit filed by a man who alleges he was sexually molested repeatedly by the former Archdiocese of Santa Fe priest.

By: Tom Lyden, May 5, 2016, Fox 9

(KMSP) - When John Nienstedt resigned as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis last June, he left the Archdiocese in bankruptcy and under a criminal investigation that continues to this day. The criminal investigation stems from the cover-up of sexual abuse in the church. But of all the secrets Nienstedt is accused of keeping, there is one that has never been revealed: the secret in his own family.

More than 40 years ago,  as a young priest, John Nienstedt, knew of an allegation involving one of his best friends and it was Nienstedt who introduced him to his victim.  

Ex-priest James Rapp will spend the next 20-40 years in prison for molesting students at Lumen Christi high school in Jackson  between 1980-86.

"His crime and his position was a murder on our soul," said Andrew Russell, who Rapp abused while he was...