Showing posts with label clergy sexual abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clergy sexual abuse. Show all posts

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Monsignor in charge of investigating clergy abuse charges, among several charged

Three Philadelphia priests, teacher charged with sexually abusing boys
By Sarah Hoye, CNN

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) - Three Philadelphia priests and a parochial school teacher were charged Thursday with raping and assaulting boys in their care, while an official with the Philadelphia Archdiocese was accused of allowing the abusive priests to have access to children, the city's district attorney's office said.

Edward Avery, 68, and Charles Engelhardt, 64, were charged with allegedly assaulting a 10-year-old boy at St. Jerome Parish from 1998 to 1999. Bernard Shero, 48, a teacher in the school, is charged with allegedly assaulting the same boy there in 2000, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams said at a Thursday press conference.

James Brennan, another priest, is accused of assaulting a different boy, a 14-year-old, in 1996.

Monsignor William Lynn, who served as the Secretary for Clergy for the under former Philadelphia Archbishop Anthony Bevilacqua, was charged with two counts of endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the alleged assaults, Williams said.

From 1992 until 2004, Lynn was responsible for investigating reports that priests had sexually abused children, the district attorney's office said.

The grand jury found that Lynn, 60, endangered children, including the alleged victims of those charged Thursday, by knowingly allowing dangerous priests to continue in the ministry in roles in which they had access to children.
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Three Philadelphia priests, teacher charged

Monday, March 22, 2010

Survivor shows sexual abuse victims how to reclaim their lives

Vacaville man showing other sexual abuse victims how to reclaim their lives
By David Deerfeeder
Posted: 03/21/2010 12:02:56 PM PDT


I attended a Roman Catholic elementary school, high school and university. I knew many dedicated priests and nuns who lived in integrity. Early on, I also met the priest who molested me repeatedly as a child. He was a sick and twisted individual. With the emerging news of sex abuse scandals concerning Roman Catholic schools in Europe, I am reminded of my own abuse experiences and the long road of reaction and recovery that followed them. Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops Conference, is quoted as saying, "Sexual abuse of children ... has neither to do with celibacy, nor with homosexuality, nor with Catholic sexual doctrine."

I am relieved to hear a Roman Catholic prelate who understands that the sexual abuse of a child by an adult is not about sexual orientation. It is about power. Recovering from sexual abuse is also about power. Breaking the silence about what happened is the start of reclaiming the power that was surrendered -- not lost -- during the abuse. It may be decades before that silence can be approached, much less broken. It requires attaining a moment that feels safe and mustering enough courage to feel strong.

It can be a long and difficult road from the abuse to that moment of coinciding strength and safety. Our society portrays the ideal man as the strong, silent type, expected to rise to any challenge in a world where "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." Even a boy knows this expectation. When he is sexually abused, he knows he was not the winner in the encounter. Shame over his powerlessness will hold him in silence for as long as he keeps the secret.
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Saturday, September 26, 2009

Clergy abuse victims suffering after settlements

Clergy abuse victims suffering after settlements
Chris Carlson / AP
Money was meant to heal, but for the most deeply scarred, the checks have instead made things far worse. Virginia and Frank Zamora, with a picture of their son, Dominic.
LOS ANGELES - David Guerrero lies curled like a small child in bed, his teeth chattering and his fever spiked at 104 degrees. He has left his room only once since he crawled home from his latest crystal meth binge three days ago, to let his mother drive him to the emergency room for his soaring temperature.

Now, Minerva Guerrero hovers close to her 41-year-old son, making a mental list of the day ahead: she must change his bed linens, nurse him, pick up his new prescriptions.

Sixty miles away and days later, Dominic Zamora rages at his father, who suspects he bought a house in someone else's name. You're not my father, Dominic screams. You just want my money. When the 36-year-old finally calls his parents three weeks later, he is drunk and angry at the world — and most especially, at them.



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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation

Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation
Denis Lyons is held on suspicion of molesting a boy in the 1990s while assigned to a Costa Mesa church.
By Paloma Esquivel
July 22, 2009
A retired Roman Catholic priest from Orange County who escaped prosecution six years ago for allegedly molesting a teenage boy has been arrested on suspicion of molesting another boy in the 1990s, authorities said Tuesday.

Denis Lyons, 75, of Seal Beach was arrested Monday afternoon while he was playing cards at a community center near his home in the Leisure World retirement community, prosecutors said.


Lyons faces four felony counts of lewd acts on a child under the age of 14 and a sentencing enhancement for substantial sexual conduct with a child, which would make him subject to a mandatory prison sentence, according to prosecutors. The abuse occurred between 1992 and 1995 while Lyons was assigned to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa, prosecutors said.

Criminal charges in an earlier case against Lyons were dropped after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 invalidated as unconstitutional a California law that had extended the statute of limitations on child molestation to include decades-old cases.
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Retired Orange County Catholic priest arrested in alleged molestation

Monday, July 20, 2009

Mary Setterholm on a wave of forgiveness

A wave of forgiveness
Steve Lopez
July 19, 2009

It's another beautiful day in paradise and I'm out on the ocean, riding waves with a former national surfing champion and onetime prostitute who's about to join a seminary.

Go ahead, try to name one other state where I could have written that sentence.

"Terrific!" yells Mary Setterholm, my instructor, who forgives my every wipeout and cheers when I finally ride a wave all the way to shore.

Setterholm, who now runs a Santa Monica surfing school, won the U.S. Women's title in 1972, at age 17. And you're not going to believe where her trophy is:

On Cardinal Roger M. Mahony's desk.

Where do I even begin?

Perhaps with the e-mail from Ann Hayman, a minister at Brentwood Presbyterian, who remembered that I once wrote about a skid row prostitute who lived in a Porta-Potty but later turned her life around. Hayman, who worked with prostitutes for 28 years, had someone she wanted me to meet.

So I drove to Brentwood to meet Hayman and Setterholm. Over coffee -- and the next day at the beach -- Setterholm spun a tale both tragic and triumphant:

As a young child, Setterholm told me, she was physically and sexually abused repeatedly by a baby-sitter, and then beginning in seventh grade, she was molested for years by a now-deceased priest from her Catholic church in Westwood. When her family moved to the Huntington Beach area, Setterholm found herself drawn to the sea. There was honesty and security in the rhythm of the waves, but the ride to the shore was fraught with danger.
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A wave of forgiveness

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Did House chaplain once hide clergy sex crimes?

Survivors group: Did House chaplain once hide clergy sex crimes?
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday November 20, 2008


Roll Call revealed Wednesday that the Catholic priest who currently serves as chaplain for the House of Representatives formerly oversaw a retreat outside Chicago where troubled priests were sent, including those accused of sexual misconduct.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has issued a statement concerning these revelations about Rev. Daniel Coughlin. "Sadly, this is a familiar pattern in the Chicago archdiocese: a priest who successfully keeps quiet about clergy sex crimes wins a promotion. ... Among other questions, Coughlin needs to be asked, 'Did you ever call the police about any of these known or alleged crimes and if not, why not?'"


What Hastert's staffers did not ask, and Coughlin did not volunteer, was that he had spent the previous ten years, from 1990 to 2000, first directing a retreat for troubled priests and then serving as their vicar. A dozen of the priests Coughlin was responsible for were ultimately forced out of the priesthood and at least ten were alleged sexual abusers.
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