News Story of the Day

International Policy Digest

May 22, 2025

By Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Today, I’m joined by Katherine Archer, Father Bojan Jovanović, Dr. Hermina Nedelescu, and Dorothy Small for a wide-ranging discussion on clergy abuse—its psychological toll, institutional roots, and pathways to reform.

Katherine Archer is the co-founder of Prosopon Healing and a graduate student in Theological Studies. She will begin a Master’s in Counseling Psychology in the fall. Her work focuses on clergy abuse within the Eastern Orthodox Church, blending academic research with nonprofit advocacy. Archer champions policy reform addressing adult clergy exploitation, advancing a vision of healing grounded in justice, accountability, and survivor support.

Father Bojan Jovanović, a Serbian Orthodox priest and Secretary of the Union of Christians of Croatia is known for his searing critiques of institutional failings within the Church. His book Confession: How We Killed God and his work with the Alliance of Christians of Croatia underscore a commitment to ethical reform and moral reckoning. Jovanović advocates for transparency and internal dialogue as essential steps toward restoring trust in religious life.

Dr. Hermina Nedelescu is a neuroscientist at Scripps Research in San Diego whose research probes the neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior, particularly in the context of substance use and trauma. Her current work explores how trauma, including sexual abuse, is encoded in the brain’s circuitry and how community-based interventions can address PTSD and addiction in survivors of clergy abuse.

Dorothy Small is a retired registered nurse and longtime survivor advocate with SNAP. A survivor of both childhood and adult clergy abuse, Small began speaking out long before the #MeToo movement gave such voices a broader platform. A cancer survivor and grandmother, she now writes about recovery, resilience, and personal freedom, amplifying the strength of survivors and the urgency of institutional accountability.

Pope Leo XIV appears at the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica for his first Sunday blessing after his election, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, May 11, 2025.(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)

AP

May 21, 2025

By Sophia Tareen

CHICAGO (AP) — Survivors of clergy sexual abuse amplified calls Tuesday for a global zero-tolerance policy from the new pope’s American hometown and raised questions about Leo XIV’s history of dealing with accused priests from Chicago to Australia.

The Archdiocese of Chicago responded by defending Leo’s record and saying he had “consistently expressed his compassion for survivors of this crime and sin.”

The cases span Robert Prevost’s previous posts. They include leading a Catholic religious order, bishop and as head of the Vatican’s office for bishops, where he was made cardinal.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called out alleged abuse by Chicago priests and other clergy in Peru, Colombia, Canada and Australia where it contended the new pope should have done more.

Along with a worldwide zero-tolerance law for accused priests, SNAP has called for a global truth commission, survivor reparations and church transparency measures.

“It is our hope that Pope Leo does the right thing,” Shaun Dougherty, SNAP president, told reporters in Chicago. “It is our gut, in our experience, that says that he will need the pressure.”

Associated Press requests for comment to the Vatican media office Tuesday and its diplomatic representative to the United States didn’t receive immediate replies.

All of us are mandated reporters when it comes to crimes against children, writes the author, Mary Dispenza, pictured speaking in front of St. James Cathedral in Seattle. (Catalina Gaitán / The Seattle Times, 2024)

The Seattle Times

May 16, 2025

By Mary Dispenza, Special to The Seattle Times

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into a new Washington law, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on May 2, that adds clergy to the list of professionals required to report child abuse or neglect to law enforcement. It does not protect what is said in Confession. “It is anti-Catholic,” the administration says.

I say the law is not anti-Catholic. Anti-Catholic behavior would be allowing actions that harm children. Reporting crimes against children is the best of Catholic behavior. The Catholic Church is not being singled out or persecuted — the law includes all faiths and spiritual institutions that argue they do not have a duty to report sexual abuse against children.

The fact that the DOJ is investigating the validity of our constitutional right to put forward a bill and pass it strikes me as ludicrous. 

As a survivor of clergy abuse at age 7, who shared her abuse and the perpetrator’s name in the confessional at age 18, I know the fallout from such secrecy. Confession protected my abuser, the Rev. George Neville Rucker, who went on to rape and abuse dozens of girls over the next four decades. The seal of confession should not hold when we are talking about crimes against children. A priest’s calling is to intervene on behalf of the vulnerable, especially children, who are powerless.  

It is important to remember that every time sexual assault against a child is confessed and kept secret, a perpetrator is free to abuse that child, and others, again and again. The Los Angeles archdiocese eventually agreed to pay $60 million to 44 of Rucker’s victims. He died in 2014.

VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Boston Globe

May 8, 2025

By Joan Vennochi

How much the experiences of the US Catholic Church will influence the new pope on this issue is unknown.

An American pope was considered a longshot to be selected as a successor to Pope Francis. But now that it has happened, Pope Leo XIV could be the best hope survivors and their advocates have when it comes to getting the Catholic Church to finally address the long-running clergy sexual abuse scandal in a meaningful way.

Seen from the Spokane Transit Authority Plaza, the smoky-red sun sets near Our Lady of Lourdes cathedral on Sept. 8, 2017. (JESSE TINSLEY/The Spokesman-Review)

The Spokesman-Review

May 7, 2025

By Mitchell Roland

The Catholic bishops in Spokane and Seattle have told parishioners they will not fully comply with a new Washington law that requires clergy to report sexual abuse to police, similar to teachers, police officers and other professionals.

Catholic leaders say that priests who hear confessions are obligated to keep those confessions secret, but that they are supportive of the rule outside of the Catholic sacrament of confession.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that it has opened an investigation into the law, alleging that it “appears on its face to violate the First Amendment.”

In separate statements, Thomas Daly, bishop of Spokane, said “shepherds, bishops and priests, are committed to keeping the seal of confession – even to the point of going to jail,” and Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle said those who break the seal of confession face excommunication from the church.

“All Catholics must know and be assured that their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential, and protected by the law of the Church,” Etienne wrote.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Camden, N.J., Wednesday, April 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

AP

May 6, 2025

By Mike Catalini

The Catholic bishop of a New Jersey diocese said he would no longer oppose a state grand jury investigation of clergy sexual abuse that the church has been fighting behind closed doors in court for years.

It’s not clear, however, that the grand jury investigation will go forward because the state Supreme Court is already considering the diocese’s earlier argument against seating one.

In a letter Monday to the state Supreme Court, an attorney for the diocese said Camden Bishop Joseph Williams wished to inform the seven justices that “the Diocese of Camden will not object to the empanelment of a grand jury for the purpose of considering a presentment.”

Williams took over the diocese in March and first said in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday that the diocese no longer wished to prevent the attorney general’s office from seating a grand jury to investigate allegations of sexual assault by priests and other religious officials.

Williams told the newspaper it was important to help those harmed by the church and that he doesn’t want to stop their voices from being heard.

In a letter to parishioners posted on Tuesday, Williams said he met with stakeholders in the diocese and there was unanimous consent to end the church’s opposition to the grand jury. The next day he went to the state attorney general’s office and informed them of the decision, Williams wrote.

“We expressed our desire to be partners with them in this public service,” Williams wrote.

Williams told the Inquirer: “Our people need to hear this, the clergy needs to hear this, so that it never happens again, first of all.”

A missionary is accused of abusing a girl for years while serving in Indonesia for Ethnos360, a religious nonprofit group.

Kayla McClain, in a current photo and one from her time growing up in Indonesia, alleges Ethnos360 failed to protect her. Courtesy Kayla McClain

NBC News

April 30, 2025

By Elizabeth Chuck

A Florida-based Christian organization with a history of child sex abuse allegations against it has been hit with a lawsuit claiming one of its missionaries sexually assaulted a minor overseas 15 years ago.  

Ethnos360, a nonprofit formerly known as New Tribes Mission, sends missionaries and their families throughout the globe. In 2019, multiple women told NBC News that they had been sexually abused decades earlier by their “dorm dads” — missionaries who were supposed to care for children at the mission’s boarding schools while their parents served in foreign countries. 

The group settled several suits related to those allegations and issued a public apology to the abuse survivors following the 2019 NBC News report. It also said it had “incorporated significant child safety training” after an independent party commissioned by New Tribes Mission shared recommendations in 2010 amid the abuse allegations. 

But Wednesday's lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court in Seminole County, Florida, says the group “failed to offer any care or professional assistance” to the family of an American child who came forward to report inappropriate sexual conduct in 2012, two years after those recommendations were issued.  

The girl, Kayla McClain, is now 24, lives in Michigan and recently graduated from nursing school. NBC News does not normally identify alleged victims of sexual assault, but McClain opted to be identified by her full name in the legal filing.

“I’m tired of being quiet and tired of being invisible,” McClain said in her first public remarks about the case. “I just want people to know what really happened and that there’s actually a face and a name behind what’s going on.”

David Doyle, an attorney for Ethnos360, said the group “takes allegations of this nature very seriously” and “categorically denies any merit to allegations made against it.”

Gov. Bob Ferguson, at podium, goes to shake hands with state Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, at the signing of a bill to make clergy mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, on May 2, 2025 in Olympia. At center is Mary Dispenza, a founding member of the Catholic Accountability Project. (Photo by Jerry Cornfield/Washington State Standard)

Washington State Standard

May 2, 2025

By Jerry Cornfield

Religious leaders in Washington will be required to report child abuse or neglect, even when it is disclosed in confession, under a new law signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on Friday.

“Protecting our kids, first, is the most important thing. This bill protects Washingtonians from abuse and harm,” Ferguson said, noting Washington is one of five states in which clergy are not currently mandated reporters.

It took Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, three years to get the bill to the governor’s desk. Making sure disclosures during confidential conversations between a penitent and religious leader were not exempt was critical, she said.

“You never put somebody’s conscience above the protection of a child,” she said.

Senate Bill 5375 passed by margins of 64-31 in the House and 28-20 in the Senate. It takes effect July 27. 

It adds clergy members to the state’s list of individuals legally required to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

More than a dozen detention services officers at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of child endangerment and abuse, conspiracy, and battery.

ABC 7

April 29, 2025

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- The county Board of Supervisors Tuesday unanimously approved a $4 billion settlement of more than 6,800 claims of sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated in juvenile facilities or foster care as far back as the 1980s, billed as the "costliest" such payout in county history.

The payout is expected to have implications on the county budget "for years to come," county officials said when announcing the proposed settlement earlier this month. The impact is already being felt in the proposed 2025-26 budget, which includes 3% cuts for many county departments.

"On behalf of the county, I apologize wholeheartedly to everyone who was harmed by these reprehensible acts," county CEO Fesia Davenport said in a statement announcing the proposed settlement. "The historic scope of this settlement makes clear that we are committed to helping the survivors recover and rebuild their lives -- and to making and enforcing the systemic changes needed to keep young people safe."

The majority of claims included in the settlement involve alleged abuse that occurred in county Probation Department juvenile facilities, most notably the MacLaren Children's Center in El Monte, which was closed in 2003.

Dear SNAP Community,

Hello from Rome!

The SNAP community has been active around the globe, and we have a lot to share.

Conference News:
We’re excited to announce that registration is now open for the SNAP 2025 Conference in Harrisburg! This milestone is thanks to the incredible work of Eduardo Lopez de Casas, Amber Perez, and the entire SNAP Conference Working Group.