Understanding sexual abuse is hard. And who wants to try? Sexual abuse is not a subject anyone wants to think about, let alone read about and study. But our clients live with the sexual abuse they went through when they were kids, or sexual assault as adults, so Ashley and I try to learn as […]
Catholic Priests in Montreal Banned from Being Alone with Children: More Needed
June 30, 2016 By
Montreal priests must now team up around kids. The Catholic Archdiocese of Montreal will ban any priest or church worker from being alone with children. The policy covers anyone “in the orbit of the church” to create a “safety net” for children. The new policy will launch with twelve pilot parishes in September and later […]
Pontifical Secrets, the Catholic Church, and the Sexual Abuse of Children
May 5, 2016 By
The Catholic Church is unique among the world’s religions. It is headed by a man whose proclamations are deemed infallible if he says so. The Vatican headquarters of the Church is a sovereign civil state that has diplomatic relations with other countries. The Church has a codified system of law that regulates the spiritual as […]
French Cardinal Say He Did Nothing Wrong In Covering Up Sex Abuse
March 17, 2016 By
French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyons France, may face criminal charges for his failure to remove a priest accused of sexually molesting at least 45 French Boy Scouts in the 1980s and 1990s. The priest, Father Bernard Preynat, admitted to authorities that he molested the Scouts. He was suspended by Barbarin in 2015 but […]
Red Buttons
March 11, 2016 By
Last week, we posted a story about the grand jury report on sexual abuse in the Catholic diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. The report revealed the scope of the problem in the small, central Pennsylvania diocese. This week, the Guardian newspaper published an in-depth story about the details found in the grand jury’s report. One of the […]
Pennsylvania Grand Jury Finds Catholic Bishops Hid Hundreds of Abuse Cases
March 4, 2016 By
Another Pennsylvania grand jury issued a scathing report on the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. Unlike the previous grand jury reports in Philadelphia, this report investigated child sex abuse and exploitation, and the negligence of bishops, in the small diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. Altoona-Johnstown serves approximately 100,000 Catholics in 89 parishes. Its small […]
Exclusive Interview with Pulitzer Prize Winning Reporter and Spotlight Team Member Steve Kurkjian
February 17, 2016 By
Stephen Kurkjian was one of the eight reporters and editors of the Boston Globe’s investigative Spotlight Team who covered the clergy abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese in 2002, a series that won a Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service. The Pulitzer Prize was Kurkjian’s third, having won as a reporter for the Spotlight Team in 1972 […]
Vatican Sex Abuse: Bishops Not Required to Report
February 12, 2016 By
A recently published Vatican sex abuse document used to train new bishops states that bishops are not required to report sexual abuse. The document has been used as a guide for new bishops since 2011 but was only recently released to the public. Instead of having a simple policy of requiring all bishops to report […]
Top Vatican Cardinal Accused of Preventing Sex Abuse Investigation
February 2, 2016 By
The former chairman of the lay diocesan council for the Diocese of Regensburg Germany has accused Cardinal Gerhard Müller of preventing a number of investigations into child sexual abuse in the diocese. Müller is no ordinary cardinal. He is now the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a powerful dicastery in […]
Whistleblower Catholic Priest Slammed by Church
January 28, 2016 By
A Florida priest claims the Diocese of Palm Beach is retaliating against him for reporting a pedophile priest. Father John Gallagher is a Catholic priest from Ireland, serving in Palm Beach. The controversy began when Gallagher learned that one of his associate priests at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church showed pornographic pictures to a […]