Ongoing religious scandals

robindch

Whereas in Belgium, the church is looking at making priests pay for the compensation that the church shells out on their behalf:

http://www.thejournal.ie/catholic-church-in-belgium-wants-priest-sex-abusers-to-pay-victims-326821-Jan2012/

TheJournal wrote:

BELGIUM’S CATHOLIC CHURCH announced today that priests and clergy who abused children will be required to pay damages, even when victims make their claims after the country’s statute of limitations has expired.

The church — in an overall response on how to deal with the abuse scandals that have enveloped it — urged victims to initially take their cases to civil authorities.

But it also said it was willing to impose penalties ranging from apologies to financial compensation, both for recent cases and for those so old they can no longer be brought to court. Over the past two years, more than 500 witnesses have come forward with accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy in Belgium, spanning several decades.

“If the culprit is still alive, he will certainly have to pay,” Bishop Guy Harpigny said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The culprits “may say civil authorities have told them the statute of limitations has expired, but we will say ‘you have to pay,’” Harpigny said. “They have committed evil. They are responsible and we will try to make them pay.”

He added that if individual priests were unable to pay, the church itself would compensate. The Belgian church, however, has not offered any figures regarding potential compensation.

The Vatican is the sole decider of whether to defrock priests.

In Belgian cases, however, Harpigny said in all instances of reports of serious pedophile cases being sent to Rome, the Vatican left the decision of leaving the priesthood to the pedophile priests themselves. So the options of the Belgian church have been limited.

If the guilty “no longer want to be priests, then we will say yes. (But) the priest has to ask’,” he said of the Vatican’s response.

For years, victims organizations have complained that church hierarchy had ignored their pleas and protected abusive priests by moving them from parish to parish instead of punishing them.

Prof. Manu Keirse, who helped the church write “Toward an overall approach of sexual abuse in the Church” in close cooperation with the bishops, said it was “not a good attitude to let everything depend on the priest.”

The Vatican was far too aloof and “infinitely slow,” he told the AP, moments after presenting the Belgian policy text with Harpigny.

“Do I really trust the policies of Rome?” Keirse asked. “No, in fact, I don’t. I have more trust in the intentions of the Belgian church.”

The Vatican has long been accused by abuse victims and bishops themselves of dragging its feet when it comes to dealing with pedophile priests: American bishops in the 1980s begged the Vatican to let them laicize pedophiles without cumbersome and time-consuming church trials, but Rome refused.

Irish bishops in the 1990s proposed reporting molester priests to police but the Vatican came back with a warning that doing so posed serious canonical problems.

Belgium’s abuse scandal broke two years ago when former bishop Roger Vangheluwe admitted to the sexual abuse of two nephews, including 13 years of abuse of one which started at age 5.

Vangheluwe said last year he had fully realized what he did was wrong, and often went to confession about it. The 75-year-old Vangheluwe resigned in 2010, just as the sex abuse scandal was spreading across Europe.

robindch

^^^ Interesting to see the Vatican won't apparently dissociate itself from a convicted pedophile and instead lets the pedophile make the decision about whether he wants to remain connected to the Vatican. Much of a muchness, I suppose.

All the same, absolute moral standards, ftw!

Penn

Oh man....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16543091

German priest admits 280 counts of sexual abuse

A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm.

Named only as Andreas L, the priest told a court in Braunschweig that he had first abused the nine-year-old son of a widowed woman parishioner.

After being banned by his diocese from making further contact with the boy, he abused two brothers, aged nine and 13.

Thousands of Germans have left the Church over revelations of abuse.

About 180,000 renounced their Catholicism in 2010, up 40% from the previous year, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports.

Pope Benedict XVI, a German by birth, briefly met victims of sexual abuse by priests when he visited his native land in September, expressing "deep compassion and regret" at their suffering.

The priest on trial in Braunschweig faces a minimum prison sentence of between six and six and a half years.

He was arrested during the summer, after the mother of his earlier victim reported him to the authorities.

“It was never my impression that the children did not consent”

She acted after her son, now aged 17, revealed to her the abuse he had undergone for two years.

Sexual assaults were made on the three boys in various settings: at the priest's house, on skiing holidays, in a parental home, on a trip to Disneyland Paris and at a church shortly before Mass.

The priest, who covered his face with a ring binder as he went into court on Thursday, said that while working in Braunschweig in 2004, he had begun a close relationship with the widow.

When Fr Andreas was moved to Salzgitter, her son often spent weekends with him, and the two would go off on short trips.

He would give the boy presents such as a camera and a mobile phone.

Abuse would often occur three times a weekend.

The priest said it had not been his intention to get close to the boy sexually, and that it had never occurred to him that he was doing harm.

When the mother began to suspect her son's relations with the priest were inappropriately close, she approached the diocese of Hildesheim, the priest's employer, which forbade further contact with the boy.

The abuse of the two brothers then began under similar circumstances, the court heard.

After contact with these victims was also forbidden, the priest approached his first victim again, writing him a letter.

It was then that the truth about the abuse emerged.

"It was never my impression that the children did not consent," the priest was quoted as saying at the trial.

When asked in court if he was a paedophile, he replied, according to local newspaper Braunschweiger Zeitung: "It would be wrong to say No but to say Yes would also fall short of the truth."

When a prosecutor asked him in court if he thought a "father would do this to his children", he was silent.

About 2,800 pornographic images were found on the priest's computer, including several of his victims.

Correspondents say members of the public who were in the courtroom watched the trial with faces rigid from shock.

They included parishioners from St Joseph's Church in Salzgitter, where Fr Andreas had once been a respected priest, according to Germany's Spiegel magazine.

Sarky

Another isolated incident, no doubt.

Arcus Arrow

Outside the Pro Cathedral today the Gardai have started to out number the protesters. While a memorial to Mary Raftery was being set up members of the Gardai took photos and video. A good number of the people going in signed the book of condolence.

CiaranMT

Who're the protestors and what are they protesting?

Arcus Arrow

CiaranMT wrote: »

Who're the protestors and what are they protesting?

They protest every Sunday outside the Pro Cathedral about the child rape and torture by Romes clerics and the Vatican's cover up. Recently, on more than one occasion, they entered the church and left a memorial to the victims on the altar. This seems to have gotten up the nose of those in the church. A few weeks ago a member of the congregation tore one of the protesters banners and he and his wife got really upset about their presence outside the church.

One of them (a protester) was verbally assaulted on a number of occasions by a guy who I'd describe as a bit on the weird side. The survivor of child abuse is now being charged with assault regarding a incident in the weeks that followed. The facts naturally are disputed. I can only imagine how I'd feel having spent a childhood in a Roman Catholic child concentration camp suffering rape for years and then having to face the kind of sh*t I heard the (Catholic) guy almost spitting into the face of the protester the day I was there.

Jamesyrp007

Fair play to the protesters.. I hope they get more numbers and make people aware of the criminals..

Arcus Arrow

Jamesyrp007 wrote: »

Fair play to the protesters.. I hope they get more numbers and make people aware of the criminals..

It's only ever the same small number of people who turn up. On a number of occasions I've contacted every group on Facebook that was based on criticism of the way the RC church has handled child rape and torture. Nobody has ever turned up. Not once did one person show up outside the pro cathedral. The protesters rarely number more than half a dozen. They do have an effect though. Members of the congregation sometimes come over and thank them. Others of course verbally abuse them and a few react hysterically. One guy knelt down in front of the table and tried to pray them away. The church authorities have begun to take a harder line as have the Gardai.

On 4th of April 2010 a thousand pairs of baby shoes on black mourning ribbon were tied to the railings of the cathedral. Now they won't even let them lean a banner against the railings. The cops ignore the cars parked on double yellow lines but tell the protesters they have to stay on the footpath but not block it.

tricky D

Continuing on from post #752

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10044057

[I wonder one day will our forces of law will cease targetting protesters like those outside the pro-cathedral and hammer down the doors of the offices of that crinimal hierarchy and haul them and the evidence off for the scrutiny they deserve. /dreams]

Belgian authorities raid 3 bishops' offices

AP foreign, Monday January 16 2012

RAF CASERT

Associated Press= BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgian authorities on Monday raided three bishops' administrative offices as an official said investigators were nearing the end of a two-year probe into whether church officials protected child abusers at the expense of their victims.

Belgian Catholic Church spokesman Geert Lesage said the offices in the Hasselt, Mechelen and Antwerp cooperated during the raids and handed over requested files as much as possible.

A judicial official close to the investigation, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Monday's surprise raids were based on some 200 witness accounts and 87 civil claims and sought to reveal if high-level clergy were involved in keeping abuse covered up.

Over the past two years, more than 500 witnesses have come forward with accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy in Belgium over several decades. One bishop was forced to resign in 2010 after he admitted he abused a nephew.

The main part of the investigation centers on "the non-assistance to people in danger and is targeted at people higher up in the hierarchy," the official said. "Possibly, we will be able to charge people." The official would not expand on who in the church hierarchy could potentially be charged.

"Today we saw the start of the final phase of Operation Chalice," the official said, using the investigation's code name. The official said the next step would likely be in a couple of months.

Tommy Scholtes, the spokesman for the Belgian bishop's conference said, "it is up to the judicial authorities to find out whether there has been negligence."

Church officials in both Mechelen and Hasselt said that several files taken Monday centered on the 1960s and 1970s. The cases are past the statute of limitation, but could still be used to show "non-assistance to people in danger," said Jeroen Moens, a spokesman for the Mechelen Bishops' office.

A tally of the raids showed that some two dozen files were collected from the three offices based on individual cases, reports of meetings between high clergy and victims and exchanges of letters.

The Belgian church is also leading an investigation into the allegations.

The raids were the first in "Operation Chalice" since June 2010, when authorities seized hundreds of case files from a church and used power tools to open a prelate's crypt in Mechelen's St. Rumbold Cathedral seeking evidence. Pope Benedict XVI called the raids "deplorable" at the time.

That raid was declared excessive by a Belgian court and based on premises that were too vague. But the government said the investigation could continue if the inquiry respects legal rules.

The judicial official stressed that "the context was totally different this time around."

In Hasselt, the files of four cases were taken, but church officials were allowed to take a copy first, said Clem Vande Broek, a spokesman for the Hasselt bishop's office. He said two of the cases dated from over 40 years back while the suspects involved had already died and were already known to judicial authorities.

"The whole procedure was correctly dealt with," said Vande Broek.

The judicial official said that copies were always allowed to be taken to allow the church to continue its own investigation.

The scandal has had a huge impact on the Belgian church and has highlighted the issue of sex abuse, which has undermined the church's credibility in many Western nations. Revelations of rape or other sexual abuse of minors by priests, and of cover-ups by bishops, piled up for months.

Belgium's abuse scandal broke when Bruges bishop Roger Vangheluwe admitted to the sexual abuse of a nephew for 13 years, starting when the boy was 5. He acknowledged briefly abusing a second nephew too.

joseph brand

Obviously the threat of everlasting flames, burning, torture etc in Hell doesn't scare these priests and bishops because they know it's a load of sh1te.

The Pope said he feels a bit sad for the victims of child rape. That makes everything better. :mad:

davoxx

just invade the vatican for war crimes ... we can use the hoarded gold to save the euro :rolleyes:

Arcus Arrow

There will be another protest outside the Pro next Sunday. Everyone is welcome to drop by and sign the petition just to show support. They'll be there from 10.30pm to 12pm.

magicbastarder

this is just bat****.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/17/michael-gove-king-james-bible

Galvasean

magicbastarder wrote: »

this is just bat****.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/17/michael-gove-king-james-bible

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hotblack Desiato

Wow. I only heard of him recently and thought he had clue (he wants to scrap the rubbish 'how to use MS Word' sad joke that passes for an IT syllabus, and let schools teach it properly if they can), but state-funded Bibles for schools? that's a real good ol' boy duelling banjos moment.

dmw07

magicbastarder wrote: »

this is just bat****.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/17/michael-gove-king-james-bible

Education secretary no less.

magicbastarder

warning - this is a fairly depressing read.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202

MrPudding

magicbastarder wrote: »

warning - this is a fairly depressing read.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202

That is beyond depressing.

Should we take consolation from the fact that the tormentors and school board members probably aren't real christians?

MrP

recedite

magicbastarder wrote: »

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202

"In April, Justin came home from school and found his mother at the top of the stairs, tending to the saltwater fish tank. "Mom," he said tentatively, "a kid told me at school today I'm gonna go to hell because I'm gay."

"That's not true. God loves everybody," his mom replied. "That kid needs to go home and read his Bible."



Sad to say, these kids may not have been getting the best kind of support at home either.

mikhail

recedite wrote: »

"In April, Justin came home from school and found his mother at the top of the stairs, tending to the saltwater fish tank. "Mom," he said tentatively, "a kid told me at school today I'm gonna go to hell because I'm gay."

"That's not true. God loves everybody," his mom replied. "That kid needs to go home and read his Bible."



Sad to say, these kids may not have been getting the best kind of support at home either.

The biblical condemnation of homosexuality is on a par with its condemnation of shellfish. Compared with its position on slavery, uxorial obedience, capital punishment, and abortion (the first three are enthusiastically recommended, the latter carries a small fine), it's not a big deal. The fact that his parents support him is the important thing.

Or did you mean to say that that area is so widely religious that many of them are likely to find hostile homes? Sadly true of most places.

recedite

I don't think the "mom" was hostile to her own son, but if either Justin or his oppressors took up her advice and read what the bible had to say about homosexuality, lets just say it would not have helped matters.

kylith

magicbastarder wrote: »

warning - this is a fairly depressing read.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202

I have never been so furious and disgusted in all my life. How dare these people try to deny their responsibility for those poor children.

Delirium

Cardinal Egan Criticized for Retracting Apology on Sexual Abuse Crisis

In 2002, at the height of the outcry over the sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests, the Archbishop of New York, Edward M. Egan, issued a letter to be read at Mass. In it, he offered an apology about the church’s handling of sex-abuse cases in New York and in Bridgeport, Conn., where he was previously posted.

“It is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this problem,” he wrote. “If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”

Now, 10 years later and in retirement, Cardinal Egan has taken back his apology.

In an interview in the February issue of Connecticut magazine, a surprisingly frank Cardinal Egan said of the apology, “I never should have said that,” and added, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”

He said many more things in the interview, some of them seemingly at odds with the facts. He repeatedly denied that any sex abuse had occurred on his watch in Bridgeport. He said that even now, the church in Connecticut had no obligation to report sexual abuse accusations to the authorities. (A law on the books since the 1970s says otherwise.) And he described the Bridgeport diocese’s handling of sex-abuse cases as “incredibly good.”

All of which has Cardinal Egan, now 79 and living in Manhattan, drawing fire from advocates who say he has reopened old wounds.

“To many victims,” said Paul Mones, a lawyer who represented several victims of sexual abuse in New York, “an apology was critical to their being made whole, to feeling that, yes, the church knows that I was wronged and that this was a problem that was going on for decades. So if the statements are true, for him to come out and say he was wrong for the apology is more than tragic.”

During then-Bishop Egan’s reign in Bridgeport, from 1988 to 2000, dozens of people came forward with claims of sex abuse by priests, some of it having occurred recently. One priest checked himself out of a psychiatric center and continued to receive a stipend from the diocese after he had been accused by a dozen parishioners of abuses involving anal sex and beatings.

In the magazine, Cardinal Egan said, “I never had one of these sex abuse cases.” He added, “If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I’d be happy to know who he is.”

On Tuesday, as criticism mounted, Cardinal Egan, who retired in 2009, released a statement, reiterating that there had never been “even one known case” of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest in his tenure in Bridgeport or New York. “The suffering and the damage to innocent children and their loved ones that the sexual abuse of minors causes are horrendous beyond all expression,” he wrote.

Cindy L. Robinson, a lawyer whose firm represented more than 90 Bridgeport abuse victims, including ones who said they were abused as minors by priests during Cardinal Egan’s tenure, said she read the cardinal’s comments “with utter disbelief.”

David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, urged Cardinal Egan’s successors in New York and Bridgeport, Timothy M. Dolan and William E. Lori, to denounce the cardinal’s “extraordinarily hurtful” statements in the magazine.

Archbishop Dolan declined to comment on Cardinal Egan’s comments, but said the cardinal had always “responded appropriately and with rigor” to sex-abuse cases. The Diocese of Bridgeport did not return a call seeking comment.

Source

joseph brand

Why are priests so scared of spending years in prison? Sure won't they get to spend ETERNITY in heaven? Or do they not believe this?

Also, if God is everywhere, is he in the room watching them (priests) anally raping children, getting blowjobs. Don't they realise that they forfeit heaven when they abuse the innocent?

They don't believe it themselves. Obvious.

marienbad

koth wrote: »

Cardinal Egan Criticized for Retracting Apology on Sexual Abuse Crisis

Dos'nt really surprise me. Most if not all of these type apologies were only given in an an attempt to shut the barn door and in the face of mounting legal and public pressure. They always sounded half hearted to me and always including the caveats of all the good priests and the great work done blah blah . We are deeply sorry but......

I am sick of the lot of them.

mascaput

joseph brand wrote: »

Why are priests so scared of spending years in prison? Sure won't they get to spend ETERNITY in heaven? Or do they not believe this?

Also, if God is everywhere, is he in the room watching them (priests) anally raping children, getting blowjobs. Don't they realise that they forfeit heaven when they abuse the innocent?

They don't believe it themselves. Obvious.

Now now, you simply just don't have the same level of faith that they do....you wouldn't understand (lucky for you), and the day you do understand and begin to think like a pervert, then it's already too late.
Of course they don't believe it themselves, as it's all make believe, but it's a great excuse for covering up evil acts. You need to create or have a belief to excuse an evil action and mindset.
Normal humans operate on reason and logic, but these disgusting beasts are the lowest of all crawling things on the earth, and that's a fact, not a belief.
Like all things that get out of control, the seed is planted in childhood, and the seed grows into an obsession with ideas of being dirty and 'sexual' (a sin). Obsession grows and grows, and twisted ideas become so normalised that perversion becomes their 'normality', their way of thinking perverse in every aspect, drinking the blood of a god and believing that they will be saved if they become 'pure', added to messed up notions of sex and sin, love and sex, a complete schizophrenic mess that always ends up in disaster, especially when they end up in a position of power over less able beings. The sick thing is that they are daily encouraged to think that they are 'entitled to believe' what they want....so they literally take full advantage of that offer. That's what perverts do.

robindch

American cardinal attempts to retract the closest he ever came to an apology for the abuse that occurred while he was a high priest:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnmcquaid/2012/02/08/cardinal-egans-non-apology-apology/

robindch

Lawyers for abuse victims in Milwaukee claim around 8,000 previously unreported cases of child-abuse:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/10/8000-new-instances-of-child-sexual-abuse-alleged-in-milwaukee-archdiocese/

Lawyers for the church are arguing that it's too long since the majority of the alleged crimes took place and that the cases should therefore be thrown out of court.

mascaput

robindch wrote: »

Lawyers for abuse victims in Milwaukee claim around 8,000 previously unreported cases of child-abuse:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/10/8000-new-instances-of-child-sexual-abuse-alleged-in-milwaukee-archdiocese/

Lawyers for the church are arguing that it's too long since the majority of the alleged crimes took place and that the cases should therefore be thrown out of court.

Odd that, isn't it? If that is their point, then why don't they apply the same principle to the alleged proposition that it was the Jews who killed Jesus, as it was so long ago and can't be proven? I suppose that's faith for you....