News Story of the Day

Arrest warrant issued for priest who admitted sex with teenage boy

By Mark Mueller, January 7, 2016, NJ.com 

An arrest warrant has been issued for a suspended New Jersey priest who admitted to a reporter in August that he engaged in a sexual encounter with a teenage boy 13 years ago.


10 Women Accuse Christian Leader Tied To Duggars Of Rape, Sex Abuse


Jesuits to pay 281k to settle lawsuits against former SLU president Daniel O'Connell

By Danny Wicentowski on Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 6:00 am, Riverfront Times

In the late 1960s, while Daniel O'Connell was a "very popular" professor at Saint Louis University, a female undergraduate alleges that he used his position to sexually abuse her during counseling sessions. Years later, in 2012, the woman filed a lawsuit claiming that O'Connell held her on his lap while he masturbated and told her that sex would bring her closer to God. 



Ex-pastor pleads guilty to child porn charge

Matthew Glowicki, January 4, 2016, Courier Journal

 

A Louisville Roman Catholic priest was taken into custody Monday after pleading guilty to a single felony count of accessing child porn.

 

Stephen Pohl, 57, a former pastor at St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, admitted to accessing the pornographic images of nude underage boys on computers at the church rectory and office between January and August 2015.

 


After criminal charges, attention turns again to Cosby's honorary degrees

BY LAURA BENSHOFF, December 31, 2015, Newsworks

In the wake of felony sexual assault charges against comedian Bill Cosby in Montgomery County, public pressure is increasing on area universities to revoke honorary degrees granted to the famous television dad.

On Wednesday, the Montgomery County district attorney's office filed three felony charges against comedian Bill Cosby, stemming from an alleged 2004 sexual assault. 


Controversial Joliet bishop laid to rest

By Nick Swedberg and Erin Gallagher, December 30, 2015, Chicago Tribune

Bishop Joseph Imesch spent nearly three decades as a dedicated shepherd to the members of the Joliet Diocese.

In that time, he forged deep bonds of friendship, and fought hard for major changes to the church he believed were due.


In God we trust? Priests in New Hampshire made that hard to do

By RAY DUCKLER, Monitor staff, Tuesday, December 29, 2015 

David Ouellette, 53, had one correction to make.

Yes, Catholic priests were more than merely respected figures in his community when he was growing up in Rochester. They were placed on a pedestal, revered, almost God-like, right?

“You got most of that right,” Ouellette told me. “The only thing you have wrong is that they weren’t looked at as God-like. In my family, they were God.”


Alaska can learn from new movie 'Spotlight' how to bring abuse out of the shadows

Trevor Storrs, December 27, 2015, Alaska Dispatch News

The new Star Wars movie has grabbed everyone’s attention. However, there is another must-see movie – "Spotlight."  This new movie, directed by Thomas McCarthy, stars Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams as the real-life Spotlight investigative journalist team for The Boston Globe. In 2001, they uncovered a pattern of sex abuse by Catholic priests in Boston and how the Catholic Church covered it up. 


Convicted Somerset County priest seeks public relations help

By Liz Zemba Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2015, Trib Live News

A Somerset County priest awaiting sentencing on charges he traveled overseas to molest orphaned boys maintains his innocence and is soliciting public relations firms to tell his story, drawing the ire of a national support group for clergy-abuse survivors.


Child Molesting Priest Seeks To Hire A PR Agency

2015-12-22 by Everything PR

Everything-PR has exclusively learned that Father Joseph D. Maurizio, a priest in Federal Prison for child sexual abuse charges has contacted a number of public relations firms seeking an agency willing to work the media to assist him in getting out of jail, or receiving a lenient sentence.


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