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Catholic brother abused boy he was counselling

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:14:05 +1100

Tag: australia

A FORMER Catholic brother has been found guilty of sexually abusing a teenager he was counselling after the youth was molested by another man.

In the Sydney District Court yesterday a jury of eight women and four men convicted William Stanley Irwin, 55, on two counts of gross indecency on a male under the age of 18 at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst in the mid-1980s.

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The jury heard that Irwin, a former student, house master and part-time teacher at the college, kissed the youth and initiated mutual masturbation when the pair stayed at the boarding school overnight during a road trip in 1986.
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They were also told that in the weeks or months after the assault the teenager reported the abuse to a nun, and then to his parents, who spoke to the Provincial of the Vincentian order, Father Gerald Scott.

But the jury was not present when the court heard of a ''strictly confidential'' file in which Irwin was recorded as having admitted ''the bed incident'' during an interview in 1987.

Irwin went on to be a dormitory master at St Stanislaus for two years. After his arrest in 2009 he was stood down from St Aloysius College at Milsons Point, a day school for boys run by the Jesuits, where he had been a chaplain and teacher since 2003.

Irwin, who left the Vincentians in 2002 and lives with his partner in Pyrmont, had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The victim, who is now 41, had been molested by a man when he was 15 during a work experience stint at the Puffing Billy Railway in Victoria.

His parents told the court that they trusted Irwin, whom they knew as ''Brother Bill'', and asked him to help their son deal with his feelings about the sexual abuse.

The boy began visiting Irwin for counselling sessions, often in the priests' quarters. In the second half of 1986 Irwin drove the boy from Melbourne to Sydney and showed him the Wall in Darlinghurst and told him it was where homosexual men gathered to solicit sex. The Crown argued it was to ''plant'' the idea of homosexual sex in the boy's mind.

Irwin was granted bail and will be sentenced on July 22.

Tag: william-stanley-irwin

Tag: vincentian-fathers st-stanislaus-college nsw bathurst

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/catholic-br...1cnhj.html ...

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:10:41 +1100

Tag: england
Tag: australia
Tag: canada
Tag: finland
Tag: ireland
Tag: new_zealand
Tag: netherlands

By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

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The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.

The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

Their means of analysing the data invokes what is known as nonlinear dynamics - a mathematical approach that has been used to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.

One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.

At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.

"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.

"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."

Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.

They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a "network structure" more representative of the one at work in the world.

"Obviously we don't really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society," he said.

However, he told BBC News that he thought it was "a suggestive result".

"It's interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.

"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-env...t-12811197 ...

Catholic brother abused youth: jury told

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:41:54 +1100

Tag: australia

A Catholic brother molested a teenager he was counselling after the youth was sexually assaulted by another man, a Sydney jury has been told.

Crown prosecutor Nanette Williams said the youth's parents, who had respected and trusted William Stanley Irwin, had arranged for him to counsel their son.

"(The teenager) found the accused to be sympathetic and he welcomed the support he received from the accused at that time," she said in the NSW District Court on Wednesday.
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Irwin, 55, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of gross indecency on a male under the age of 18 in the mid-1980s.

Ms Williams said Irwin took the 17-year-old youth on a road trip from Melbourne and the alleged offences occurred when they stayed overnight at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst.

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"The accused himself was a student at Stanislaus College in Bathurst in the 1970s and after that he went to a seminary and became a member of the order of St Vincentian," she said.

Irwin, who was based at the college from 1980 to 1983 and from 1987 to 1989, met the complainant and his parents when he worked in a Melbourne parish.

Ms Williams said Irwin's alleged victim was 15 and on work experience when he was sexually assaulted by another man, who later pleaded guilty and was jailed.

The teenager's parents were referred to Irwin, who counselled youths aged between 15 and 18, and at first the teenager welcomed his support.

"After a time, the accused began to put his arm around his shoulder and embrace him at the end of each counselling session," Ms Williams said.

The youth's parents allowed him to go on the road trip with Irwin and they first stopped in Sydney, where they stayed in a seminary and nothing untoward happened.

Ms Williams said the next day Irwin showed him "a homosexual mission" where he once worked, as well as a place "where homosexuals gathered".

That night they stayed at St Stanislaus and after dinner, the youth went to Irwin's room with him, Ms Williams said.

Irwin asked the youth to lie down on the bed with him, which they did, and after talking for a while, the man allegedly began kissing the youth.

Ms Williams alleged that Irwin put his hand inside the youth's trousers and fondled him, before getting the youth to masturbate Irwin and vice-versa.

"..... the accused told (the youth) not to tell anyone what they had done," she said.

"I expect (the youth) will tell you he felt guilty and upset because he knew what the accused had done was wrong and inappropriate."

His parents found out what happened after the youth told a nun, she said.

The parents then met with a Father Gerald Scott who travelled from Sydney to Melbourne.

The trial is continuing.

Tag: william-stanley-irwin

Tag: vincentian-fathers st-stanislaus-college nsw bathurst

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-...1c5z7.html ...

Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:00:44 +1100

Tag: vatican

By Frances Kennedy in Rome

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

The Catholic Church in Rome made the extraordinary admission yesterday that it is aware priests from at least 23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.

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Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.

Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

The reports said that the cultures in some African countries made it almost impossible for a young woman to disobey an older man, especially one seen as spiritually superior. There were cases of novices who applied to their local priest or bishop for certificates of good Catholic practice that were required for them to pursue their vocation. In return they were made to have sex. Some incidents of sexual abuse allegedly took place almost within the Vatican walls.

Certain unscrupulous clerics took advantage of young nuns who were having trouble finding accommodation, writing their essays and funding their theological studies.

Forced to acknowledge the problem, the Vatican has tried to play down its gravity. In a statement issued yesterday the Pope's official spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, said: "The problem is known and involves a restricted geographical area. Certain negative situations must not overshadow the often heroic faith of the overwhelming majority of religious, nuns and priests".

One of the most comprehensive documents was compiled by Sister Maura O'Donohue, an Aids co-ordinator for Cafod, the London-based Catholic Fund for Overseas Development.

She noted that religious sisters had been identified as "safe" targets for sexual activity. She quotes a case in 1991 of a community superior being approached by priests requesting that the nuns be made available to them for sexual favours.

"When the superior refused the priests explained they would otherwise be obliged to go to the village to find women and might thus get Aids."Sister O'Donohue said her initial reaction to what she was told by her fellow religious "was one of shock and disbelief at the magnitude of the problem".

While most of the abuse happened in African countries, Sister O'Donohue reported incidents in 23 countries including India, Ireland, Italy, the Philippines and the United States.

She heard cases of priests encouraging the nuns to take the pill telling them it would prevent HIV. Others "actually encouraged abortion for the sisters" and Catholic hospitals and medical staff reported pressure from priests to carry out terminations for nuns and other young women.

O'Donohue wrote in her report how a vicar in one African diocese had talked "quite openly" about sex, saying that "celibacy in the African context means a priest does not get married, but does not mean he does not have children."

The head of the Vatican congregation for Religious Life, Cardinal Martinez Somalo, has set up a committee to look into the problem. But it seems to have done little beyond "awareness raising" among bishops.

More recently, in 1998, Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, put together a paper entitled The Problem of the Sexual Buse of African Religious in Africa and Rome.

She tabled the document to the Council of 16, made up of delegates of the international association of women's and men's religious communities and the Vatican office responsible for religious life. She noted that a contributing cause was the "conspiracy of silence".

When she addressed bishops on the problem, many of them felt it was disloyal of the sisters to send reports.

"However, the sisters claim they have done so time and time again. Sometimes they were not well received. In some instances they are blamed for what happened. Even when they are listened to sympathetically nothing much seems to be done" One of the most tragic elements that emerges is the fate of the victims. While the offending priests are usually moved or sent away for studies, the women are normally chased out of their religious orders, they are then either to scared to return to their families or are rejected by them. they often finished up as outcasts, or, in a cruel twist of irony, as prostitutes, making a meagre living from an act they had vowed never to do.

One of the few religious in Rome willing to talk about the report was Father Giulio Albanese, of MISNA, the missionary news agency. "Missionaries are human beings, who are often living under immense psychological pressure in situations of war and ongoing violence. On one hand it's important to condemn this horror and it's important tell the truth, but we must not emphasise this at the expense of the work done by the majority, many of whom have laid down lives for witness" said Fr Albanese "The press only talks about missionaries when they are killed, kidnapped or are involved in something scandalous" he added.

As the Vatican digests the unpalatable evidence of how their own priests are ruining the lives of their sisters, many Catholics hope a strong message may come from on high. With the American bishops, the Pope spoke in clear terms about paedophile priests, telling them this was a scourge that had to be faced. Some now hope that he may be equally courageous in denouncing an evil which has been covered by silence and shame for too long.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wor...1.html?r=1 ...

Vincentian Priest befriended young schoolgirls

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:19:08 +1100

Tag: australia
Tag: new_zealand

By a Broken Rites researcher

Some Australian women, now advancing in years, are still complaining about having been abused (when they were children) by Father Dominic Phillips, a senior Catholic priest from the Vincentian Fathers religious order.

Phillips worked in several Australian parishes that were staffed by the Vincentian order (officially called the Congregation of the Mission).

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He also taught trainee priests at seminaries in Australia and New Zealand.

Even while working at seminaries, he would frequent a nearby parish, where he would befriend local families and their children. He would invite a child to visit the priest's house, where he would maul the child indecently. He evidently had a preference for girls.

Another worry about Phillips is that he was a chaplain to deaf-mute children in New South Wales and New Zealand — and these vulnerable children could have been at risk.

The priest's background

At the age of 17 in New South Wales, Dominic Phillips somehow became recruited by the Vincentian order as a trainee priest. A part of his training was done in a Vincentian seminary facility attached to St Stanislaus College (a boys' high school) at, Bathurst NSW. After being ordained, Phillips spent several years teaching trainee Vincentian priests at St Stanislaus College. (This mention of St Stanislaus College will raise some eyebrows, because the Vincentians have developed a reputation for a culture of sexual abuse and cover-up, and there been public revelations about this at St Stanislaus.)

Phillips taught future priests at three seminaries:

* a Vincentian seminary in Eastwood in Sydney;

* New Zealand's national seminary (Holy Cross College), situated then at Mosgiel (staffed then by the Vincentian order); and

* South Australia's seminary (St Francis Xavier) in Rostrevor, Adelaide (this was from 1957 to 1964).

While at these seminaries, he also became known in the local parish.

In between his seminary postings, he spent some years working full-time in parishes:

* in Malvern Victoria (St Joseph's parish), 1953-55;

* in Southport, Queensland (Mary Immaculate parish), 1956; and

* in Wandal, Rockhampton, Queensland (St Vincent's parish), 1966-70,

Complaints from women
Three women, who do not know each other (they are from three separate states have contacted Broken Rites), complaining about having been handled indecently by Fr Dominic Phillips when they were children.

One victim, "Deirdre" (born 1958), of Rockhampton QLD, told Broken Rites in 1994:

"In the late 1960s, from when I was 10 until when I was 12, I was living in St Vincent's parish, Wandal, Rockhampton, Queensland. I was a pupil at the local primary school, St Joseph's, in Grades 4, 5 and 6.

"We girls used to visit St Vincent's church at lunch-time to clean the brass vessels in the sacristy. Also, one or other of us would visit Fr Phillips in his office — at weekends, as well as on school days.

"He would sit me on his lap. On several occasions, his hands wandered, touching my private parts.

"Another girl told me that he did the same thing to her."

Another victim, "Mandy" (born 1957), has told Broken Rites that she encountered Fr Phillips when he was the spiritual director at Adelaide's St Francis Xavier seminary in Rostrevor. Mandy's family lived near the seminary. They attended the local parish church, where Fr Phillips befriended her family. Mandy says that Phillips dealt indecently with her in his room at the seminary, when she was seven.

And "Rita" (born 1943) said that she was molested by Fr Phillips at St Joseph's parish, Malvern (in Melbourne's inner south-east) about 1953, when she was aged 10.

These women are particularly alarmed that, as a child-abuser, Fr Dominic Phillips was helping to train future Catholic priests.

And his role as a chaplain to deaf children in New South Wales and New Zealand gives cause for concern.

Tag: vincentian-fathers st-stanislaus-college nsw bathurst

http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/n...llips.html ...

After 42 years, two victims expose the church's cover-up

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 23:56:18 +1100

Tag: australia

By a Broken Rites researcher

Two victims have demonstrated that, under Australian law, it is never too late to bring a church sex-offender to justice. In the Melbourne County Court in the State of Victoria on 8 March 2011, a former Catholic religious brother was finally jailed for indecently assaulting two vulnerable boys in their beds in a boarding school 42 years ago.

The offender, Peter Paul van Ruth, was sentenced to 28 months jail, with a minimum of 16 months behind bars before becoming elegible for parole.

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The offences occurred in 1969 while van Ruth (then aged 22) worked (as Brother Van Ruth) at Salesian College "Rupertswood" (a secondary school) in Sunbury, near Melbourne. He was 64 when jailed.

This school was operated by the Salesians of Don Bosco religious order. "Rupertswood" then was a boys-only school, with boarders as well as day students. The boarders included many from distant communities.

Van Ruth, who is known by his middle name (Paul), was born on 5 July 1946. He was charged with indecent assaults against two boys, both aged 12. These were not necessarily the only boys who were touched by Brother Paul Van Ruth. These were the two who have spoken with the police.

Peter Paul Van Ruth pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent assault upon two male children. One of the charges involved the digital penetration of the child.

The court proceedings
Peter Paul Van Ruth (residing in Adelaide, South Australia) appeared before a magistrate in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 23 July 2010. There, the defence lawyer applied to have the sentencing done by the magistrate's court, rather than by a judge in the County court (the latter court can impose a more severe sentence). However, the magistrate refused this application, and ordered Van Ruth to appear in the County Court for sentencing by a judge.

At the County Court on 21 February 2011, Judge Jane Campton heard submissions from the prosecutor and a defence lawyer about the circumstances of the offending and also about what sort of sentence the court should impose.

The court was told that Peter Paul Van Ruth came from a "strict" Catholic family background. At age 12, his family sent him to be a boarder at Salesian College in Chadstone, Melbourne. There, the Salesians fancied him as a future Salesian brother or priest. Thus, at age 14, he became an "aspirant" for a "religious vocation". Thus, during his years as a boarder there, he absorbed the Salesian culture. Next, at 18, he became a novice at the Salesian seminary in Oakleigh, Melbourne. There, he donned clerical garb and became "Brother" Paul Van Ruth.

In 1969, aged 22, the Salesians appointed him to teach at "Rupertswood" College, at Sunbury (in Melbourne's outer north-west), where he was put in charge of a dormitory containing about 30 or 40 beds for incoming young boarders. His duties included supervising the boys at bed-time — and this is when Van Ruth committed his sexual offences.

* Victim No. 1 was upset about being separated from his family and was crying in bed. On several occasions, after "lights-out", Van Ruth got into bed with the boy and touched him sexually. On one occasion, Van Ruth put his finger into the boy's anus, the court was told. Two of the court charges related to this victim, although the incidents happened on more than two occasions.

* Victim No. 2 was upset after learning that his grandmother had died. After "lights-out", Van Ruth got into this boy's bed and touched him indecently.

Each victim felt powerless to complain to Van Ruth's fellow-Salesians in the school administration. Eventually, the parents of Victim No. 1 learned about the abuse and they complained to the Salesians.

The Salesians' way of solving the Van Ruth problem was to transfer him to a Salesian community in South Australia. There, they immediately arranged for him to leave the Salesian order, enabling him to join the South Australian state education department in 1970 as Mister Van Ruth, using the teachers' qualification that he had gained from the Salesians. Thus, he became a teacher in government primary schools — and the Salesians had "solved" their Van Ruth problem.

In 1978, Mr Van Ruth was accepted back into the Catholic education system (still in South Australia), becoming a principal or deputy principal in several church schools.

In 1993 the Catholic Education Office seconded Mr Van Ruth to the South Australian government schools registration board.

Meanwhile, three decades after the 1969 abuse, Van Ruth's victims were still feeling aggrieved by the way in which Van Ruth had been inflicted on them and by the way in which their lives had been disrupted. In 2006, Victim No. 1 from "Rupertswood" consulted the Victoria Police Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (SOCA) squad. After being interviewed by a specialist police officer, he signed an official police statement about the abuse.

The matter was later investigated by Detective Senior Constable Nathan Toey, of the Victoria Police criminal investigations unit (CIU) at Broadmeadows (situated in the region of "Rupertswood" College). During the investigation, Detective Toey met Victim No. 2.

Police then located Paul Van Ruth in South Australia. At first, Van Ruth explained his actions by telling police that he had been starting a "sex education" program for the boys.

In fact, however, Van Ruth did not have proper qualifications to give "sex education". In court, his lawyer said that that Salesians had put Brother Van Ruth in charge of these boys without having proper safeguards in place for the protection of the children.

Because Van Ruth pleaded guilty at an early stage, the court proceedings were relatively brief. The victims were not required to give evidence in court, although they were sitting (separately) at the back of the courtroom as observers.

The prosecution had arranged for each victim to write an impact statement, explaining how the sexual abuse at "Rupertswood" College had affected his adolescent development and his adult life. To protect the privacy of the victims, these statements were not read out in court. The prosecutor submitted the statements to the judge to help the judge to consider the kind of penalty that should be imposed on Van Ruth.

Jailed
In sentencing Van Ruth to jail on 8 March 2011, Judge Jane Campton said a suspended sentence would be inadequate.

"Your abuse of both boys involved a substantial breach of trust," she said.

The judge ordered that Van Ruth is to be a registered sex offender for life.

Footnote
During the pre-sentence submissions on 21 February 2011, the prosecutor drew Judge Campton's attention to jail sentences imposed in previous cases involving offences against boys in church schools:

* Father Frank Gerard Klep, of the Salesian College "Rupertswood", was sentenced to a minimum of 3 years 6 months behind bars. See the Broken Rites story here.

* Christian Brother Peter Toomey, of Melbourne, was sentenced to a minimum of 2 years 6 months behind bars. See the Broken Rites story here.

In both the Klep and Toomey cases, a judge originally imposed a lesser minimum jail term but the Director of Public Prosecutions appealed against this sentence on behalf of the victims and secured a longer minimum sentence.

Other Salesians who have been convicted include:

* Fr Paul Raymond Evans,
* Brother Gregory Coffey (or Coffyn) and
* Fr David Rapson.

The Australian Salesian leadership has signed an out-of-court civil settlement with a Ruperstwood College ex-pupil who complained about Fr Julian Fox and another settlement with a different Rupertswood ex-pupil who complained about Fr Jack Ayers.

So, in the Salesian scheme of things, Brother Paul Van Ruth was certainly not unique.

http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/n...-ruth.html ...

Joelle Casteix discusses Predator Priest Martin O’Loghlen on KFI 640 AM

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 02:48:55 +1100

Tag: usa
Tag: pod_cast

On John and Ken, KFI AM 640: Joelle Casteix discusses predator priest Martin O’Loghen, the admitted sex offender that Cardinal Roger Mahony appointed to the Sex Abuse Advisory Board.

Goodnight, Roger. Thanks for nothing.

This interview originally aired on Thursday, February 24, 2011.

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http://www.tor.id.au/jk0224114p_12986..._27435.mp3

http://patrickjwall.wordpress.com/201...fi-640-am/
...

Rome priest sentenced to 15 years for paedophilia

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:16:03 +1100

Tag: italy

A court in Rome on Thursday sentenced a former Catholic priest to 15 years in prison for child abuse, as a wave of paedophilia cases by clergymen across Europe reaches Pope Benedict XVI's doorstep.

Ruggero Conti, a former parish priest at Selva Candida on the outskirts of the Italian capital, was found guilty of abusing seven children between 1998 and 2008 when he was arrested. He had claimed complete innocence.

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Prosecutors had sought 18 years in prison for Conti on charges of sex acts against minors, sexual violence and incitement to prostitution of a minor.

He was accused of carrying out some of his crimes on parish camping trips.

The case has attracted wide media attention in Italy as relatively few priestly abuse scandals have come to light in this predominantly Catholic country, compared to the hundreds in northern Europe and the United States.

A lawyer for the victims, Fabrizio Gallo, told reporters he would also seek "a just compensation" from Vatican authorities after the court ordered Conti to pay around 200,000 euros (279,000 dollars) in damages.

"This trial showed that the accusations were true and that the lives of many people have been destroyed forever. I hope the Church will find a solution and compensate victims who have been abandoned," Gallo said.

"No-one offered them a hand to help them or say sorry," he added.

During the trial, the bishop in charge of Conti's parish, Gino Reali, admitted he had ignored initial rumours saying: "I didn't believe them."

He later launched an investigation after two victims came forward.

Conti's lawyer, Patrizio Spinelli, said his client would appeal.

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/...s-for.html ...

Mum...your husband is a paedophile priest:

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:04:08 +1100

Tag: england

By Nic North

Joan Clayton spent 13 years with ‘kind, gentle’ Bill Carney until her son confronted her with some damning evidence

Joan Clayton was sitting on the veranda at her villa, overlooking the beautiful Atlantic under a clear blue sky, when her son showed her an article that would destroy her holiday – and Joan’s life as she knew it.

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She had arrived in Lanzarote just days earlier with her husband, Bill Carney, looking forward to a two-week break from the demands of running their busy guest house in Scotland. Joan was hoping to relax, sunbathe and have a chance to plan with Bill their imminent retirement to the rolling Cotswolds in England.

Then her adult son Paul rang her mobile, sounding upset and urgent. He said he had to talk to her and left his own holiday on the Spanish mainland to meet Joan in Lanzarote.

He immediately sent her husband away, asking to speak to her alone. She knew something had to be wrong but she could never have imagined the revolting news that he would share.

‘While Bill went off for a walk, Paul opened the laptop and told me he had something to show me,’ Joan told the Irish Mail on Sunday. ‘He said he wished I didn’t have to read it but said it was his duty as my son to do what he was about to do.

‘He went online and called up a newspaper article about the Murphy Report, which, at the time, I’d never heard of. I still wish I never had heard of the Murphy Report.’

It was there that Joan read for the first time that her husband had been cast out of the Roman Catholic Church following dozens of complaints about his abuse of juveniles.

The Murphy Report labelled Carney a ‘serial sex abuser’ and, in a damning 40 pages, chronicled how he was linked to at least 32 complaints and suspicions of abuse.

‘I read about what Bill was supposed to have done and I just felt physically sick,’ said Joan. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I couldn’t believe this was the same Bill – my Bill – doing all these vile, awful things to these poor young boys.

‘When Bill returned, I couldn’t look at him, let alone speak to him, so I asked Paul to deal with it. Paul and Bill went for a long walk together and spoke privately for some time but I’m unsure of exactly what was said.

‘I was too upset, confused, emotional and, yes, cross, to talk to Bill then so, when they got back to the villa, I told Paul I needed to get away and try to get my head around what I’d read about my husband.

I just didn’t know what to think at that stage but I knew there was no way I wanted to share a bed with him that night.’

Joan knew Bill had once been a priest, drummed out of the Catholic Church, he’d always told her, because of his drinking. His alcoholism had gripped him so tightly, he’d explained, that when parishioners could no longer decipher his increasingly incoherent sermons, their complaints grew so loud and frequent that he was expelled.
So he’d said.

But now, in the winter sun in the early afternoon at their luxurious villa, Joan was learning a different truth.

The Murphy Report, compiled by Judge Yvonne Murphy on how the Dublin archdiocese handled sex abuse complaints against its clergy, identified the former Father Carney as a paedophile. In fact, it was his assaults on two altar boys that had led to his expulsion 30 years earlier.

Not that he admitted it, even when confronted with the evidence on that winter’s afternoon in November 2009.

‘He told me the report was a pack of lies,’ Joan said from the Gloucestershire home where she once believed she would share the rest of her days with Carney.

There is no denying, however, that during his time as a priest in Dublin, Carney pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and he was given probation. Six families were paid compensation by the Catholic Church and, in 1992, Carney was defrocked after church authorities convicted him under canon law of child sex abuse.

However, the sexual predator refused to leave the parish house where he lived until the Church paid him €35,000.

A psychiatric assessment of Carney included in the Murphy Report describes the former priest as having a ‘psychopathic personality disorder’. More worryingly, the assessment states that the former priest’s ‘refusal to acknowledge his paedophilia means the prognosis for a cure is bleak’.

And Carney still refused to acknowledge his guilt to his wife in Lanzarote – and stayed on the island while she returned to Scotland to put their affairs in order and separate their lives.

Last night, she told for the first time of her relationship with the disgraced priest, whom she still calls ‘my Bill’.

She described how they met in 1995 at what she described as a ‘grab a granny’ singles night at the Golden Valley Hotel in Cheltenham, about 15 miles from her home.

Divorced six years earlier from the father of her three grown-up sons, Joan went along to the disco with a group of female friends. ‘Bill was with a few of his mates and we got chatting,’ said the former nurse.

‘He had a nice way about him. He was very gentlemanly and he seemed kind and gentle with it.

‘He told me he was running a pub for a friend of his, the Prince Arthur in Gloucester. It’s a Pizza Hut now.

‘He was on soft drinks but he bought me a glass or two of wine and we had a few dances. I liked him.

‘At the end of the night, he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him without hesitation because I wanted to see him again and get to know him.’

But getting to know Carney wasn’t going to be straightforward. It would be almost two years – by which time they were living together – before Carney told her he was once a priest. Even when he revealed his ecclesiastical past, he concealed the reason for his defrocking.

‘He said he’d been asked to go away and beat his drink problems,’ she said. ‘He told me he was a chronic alcoholic and that the people in church for his services were no longer able to understand what he was saying because he was slurring his words so badly.

‘But he said he’d conquered the disease and that he hadn’t had a drink for 30 years. I never saw him touch a drop of alcohol.

‘I was full of admiration for what he’d achieved in beating alcoholism and I fell in love with him very quickly. He was the most adorable, good-hearted man.’

Their relationship soon grew serious and, in the late 1990s, the couple moved to St Andrews in Scotland, where they bought an eight-bedroom guesthouse overlooking the sea. In 2004, they married.

‘It was hard work but we had the most wonderful time. We put our hearts and souls into making the business a success and enjoyed the rewards.

‘At the end of every season, we’d have a nice holiday, which is why we were in Lanzarote. We were preparing to retire at the time. I was almost 70 and we decided we’d worked hard enough for too long. We put the guesthouse on the market and planned to move back to this house here in Northleach, the town where I was brought up and had spent so much of my life.

‘We’d gone on holiday to recharge our batteries and discuss our retirement plans in detail.’

But those discussions never happened. Instead, Joan endured harrowing discussions with her family about how the life she’d planned with her husband could never be.

On the night she learned the awful truth, Joan moved out of the villa she and Carney were sharing, then left him alone on the island.

‘Paul took me to a hotel and the next day, we got a flight home and I went to Scotland on my own to wait for Bill, who I hoped would soon come home and tell me it was all a terrible misunderstanding and prove to me he wasn’t the person who described in this report.’

But Carney was in no hurry to return to Britain. Instead, he remained in Lanzarote for a year, leaving his wife to handle the sale of the guesthouse and furniture.

Two months after Paul confronted Carney in Lanzarote, Joan began divorce proceedings and now lives alone in the neat, detached home in Northleach. She says she still loves the former priest and will carry him in her heart ‘until the day I die’ – but her family insisted she could no longer be his wife.

‘It caused absolute hell in my family. I’ve got three sons and they wanted me to have nothing more to do with Bill. They told me the best thing – the only thing – I was to walk away.

‘And my mother, who is 88, sat me down and said: ‘If you go back to Bill after this, you’ll have to leave the country because you’ll be hounded for ever more here and you’ll be married to a man your family detest.

‘I suppose I had to choose between Bill and my entire family.

‘He made the decision easier because for a whole year after I first saw the report, he’d left me to sort out all our joint responsibilities, like selling up the guesthouse and sorting our possessions out.

‘I literally didn’t hear from him for a whole year. He just stayed in Lanzarote and didn’t give a damn about how I was feeling or what I was going through back in Britain – and I was going through hell.

‘I thought he was incredibly selfish for that.’

Eventually, towards the end of 2010, he returned to Britain and agreed to meet Joan in Morecambe on the Lancashire coast, where she was on a break, on a bitterly cold winter’s day.

‘He looked much the same, a little older and a little sadder maybe, but he was still my Bill – the Bill I loved.

‘I asked him to tell me the truth about what I’d read in the report and he looked me in the eyes and said it was a pack of lies. He said that even though he’d been a useless drunk at the time, he’d have remembered if he’d done what the report said he’d done.

‘He denied the assaults and he insisted he had never been interested in young boys in that way. Certainly, in all the years I knew him, he never once showed any sign that he was into boys, young or old. We had a normal, full, loving relationship, emotionally and, yes, physically.

‘I believed him 100% because I loved him and trusted him and because I didn’t believe the man I loved could ever be capable of the things he was accused of. I still believe him, to this day.’

Her head won out over her heart, however, and by the time they met again she was resolute in her decision to end their relationship.

‘I’d already made up my mind that there was no way back and I’d left him for good,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to have that last meeting so I could look him in the eye and ask him what had happened all those years ago.

‘We were standing on the beach in our coats against a wintry breeze.

‘We chatted for an hour or two and we had one last hug as we stood on the beach, then I left for my hotel alone. I didn’t look back.’

The guesthouse sold for £450,000 (€525,000) and Joan agreed to give Carney £100,000 (€116,000) in cash while she kept the remainder to pay off the mortgage on the house where she now lives.

The gold band Carney gave her on their wedding day has been sold on eBay for £30 and every photograph of him burnt by her sons.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...z1Fovvd1gf ...

German Catholic church agrees payout plan

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 00:22:49 +1100

Tag: germany

The Catholic church in Germany has put forward a plan to compensate victims of sexual abuse by its priests, offering payments of up to €5,000 to those whose cases are too old to bring to court.

It announced the plan at a meeting of a government-appointed panel today set up to address compensation for victims of abuse in foster homes in Germany, both those run by the state and by the Catholic and Protestant churches.

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Higher compensation would be awarded in "particularly serious cases", it said without setting out guidelines.

The German Church said it would also set up a €500,000 fund to prevent abuse inside and outside of the church and offer to compensate victims up to 50 hours of individual therapy.

The Catholic church has faced similar scandals in several other countries in Europe and in the United States.

In 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $660 million to 500 victims of sexual abuse dating as far back as the 1940s, the largest compensation deal of its kind.

Pope Benedict met victims of abuse by priests during his April 2008 visit to the United States.

The US church has paid $2 billion in settlements to victims since 1992.

A group representing abuse victims from schools run by the Jesuit order of priests called the German church's plan "presumptuous", but applauded it for putting an "idea" on the table.

"It's cheap how the world's richest church is trying to get itself out of the scandal," Square Table victims' group speaker Matthias Katsch told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper.

The offer falls short of the €5,000 lump sum the German Jesuits will pay their abuse victims.

The German Bishops' Conference called the plan a "quick and unbureaucratic solution", adding it "understood the rising impatience of abuse victims".

In December, victims' groups criticised the government panel and the German Catholic and Protestant churches for not offering compensation to abuse victims on par with other wealthy nations.

The panel proposed a €120 million fund for an estimated 30,000 victims of abuse in state- and church-run foster homes, and said the size of the fund could grow if more victims filed claims than expected.

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/...ayout.html ...