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Catholic church shields $2 billion in assets to limit abuse payouts

Type of protection : Granting release

Catholic church: we may have to declare bankruptcy. Financial or ...Dioceses are aggressively moving and reclassifying holdings to shrink the value of their bankruptcy estates.

For most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in the U.S. minimized the damage wrought by pedophile priests by covering up the abuse. When the bishop of the Davenport, Iowa, diocese was told in the mid-1950s that one of his priests was sexually abusing boys at a local YMCA, he kept it secret. “It is consoling to know that no general notoriety has arisen, and I pray none may result,” he wrote to a priest, capturing the strategy of the era.

Cover-ups worked when victims and their families could be intimidated or shamed into silence. But in the 1980s and ’90s, victims started filing civil lawsuits against the dioceses where the alleged incidents took place. Church leaders across the country kept these suits quiet by settling out of court and demanding nondisclosure agreements in return. Church leaders paid out about $750 million from the early ’80s through 2002, according to BishopAccountability.org, a nonprofit that tracks clergy sex abuse.

The veil of secrecy on these transactions was pierced when the Boston Globe published its investigations into church sex abuse in 2002, sparking public outrage at how clergy had protected their own. From 1950 to 2002, 4,392 priests were accused of abuse, according to a study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Study identifies 16 child sex abuse rings in Victorian Catholic Church

Type of protection : Granting release

The investigation found that clergy paedophile rings shared patterns of behaviour with criminal gangs, the Mafia, terrorist cells, corrupt police, drug dealers, money launderers and price-fixing cartels.

The research showed their abuse was facilitated and reinforced by church hierarchy, including five successive archbishops of Melbourne from Daniel Mannix, appointed in 1917, through to George Pell (himself appealing against a conviction for child sex abuse) in 2001.

The researcher, Sally Muytjens, spent more than three years investigating "dark networks" of paedophile clergy in Victorian dioceses.

Here is the shocking opening address to the royal commission about child abuse in the Catholic church

Senior counsel assisting Gail Furness SC addresses the royal commission. Source: screenshot

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse opened its first hearings for 2017 in Sydney today, once again turning its attention to the Catholic church.

Senior counsel assisting, Gail Furness SC, gave the opening address to case study 50, which is looking into the policies and procedures of Catholic church authorities.

She outlined shocking levels of alleged abuse, including 4,444 people allegedly abused between 1980 and 2015 in around 1000 different Catholic institutions.

Proof the Child Abuse Royal Commission is Bogus

George Pell with Gerald Ridsdale.

The federal Child Abuse Royal Commission is a farce. It was implemented to gather information, cover up any evidence of Australia’s massive, integrated pedophile network, and to give the public a false sense of security that something is being done to remedy the epidemic of pedophilia. I can prove the Royal Commission is corrupt, with the following single example:

The Jehovah’s Witnesses want the Supreme Court to help them cover up sex abuse

Editors notes: Simental, a known pedophile, was promoted within the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Why did they allow him to be around children?
Abusers job or title:: Priest

The organization that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses is currently embroiled in a major legal battle that involves child molestation, religious secrecy, and (possibly) the Supreme Court. The entire story is bananas, and both sides have now made their arguments as to why their case should (or should not) be taken up in the Court’s next term.

While we await the Court’s decision, it’s worth summarizing what this is all about.

The case centers around an incident that took place on July 15, 2006.

J.W., a nine-year-old girl with Jehovah’s Witness parents, was invited to her first slumber party at the home of Gilbert Simental. He had a daughter her age, so that wasn’t too weird. Two other girls (sisters) were also at the party. These families all knew and trusted Simental because, while he was no longer a local Witness leader, he had spent more than a decade as an elder in the faith. He was a religious leader who stepped down, he said, to spend more time with his son. They believed him. They all respected him. It’s why they allowed their girls into his home.

Abuser Name or Alias:: Gilbert Simental
Abusers Organisation:: Jehovahs Witness Church

Putting Church above Children - The Vatican Fails to Comply with a UN Treaty

 
Jesuit Father Hans Zollner leads a briefing for journalists in Rome to prepare for the Feb. 21-24 Vatican meeting on the protection of minors in the church. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

One way Pope Francis could move ahead with his aim of curbing clergy sex abuse in the worldwide Catholic Church would be to insist that the Holy See comply with the international human-rights treaty it signed to protect the rights of the child. Since nearly every country in the world (other than the United States) has signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 1989 treaty sets a clear international standard for Catholic bishops everywhere. 

Abusers Organisation:: Catholic Church
Matter Resolved?: No, Ongoing

At least 231 children abused at Catholic boys' choir run by Pope Benedict's brother

Germany PopeGeorge Ratzinger, Benedict’s older brother, ran the famous Regensburg choir from 1964 to 1994.

 Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict Source: Matthias Schrader/PA

AT LEAST 231 children at a famous Catholic boys’ choir in Germany were victims of physical abuse, a lawyer commissioned to investigate the scandal said today.

Blind-reported child sex abuse cases may be reopened after hundreds not investigated

Denise, whose report of abuse was de-identified, says she feels let down.Child sexual abuse victim, Denise, as a child.

Hundreds of cases of child sex abuse going back decades may be reopened after the Catholic Church publicly abandoned a controversial practice known as blind reporting.

Key points:

  • Organisations reported abuse but removed name, meaning police unable to investigate
  • Over past eight years, NSW Police received 1,476 blind reports
  • Many reports relate to Catholic Church
  • Child abuse victims are now speaking out

Blind reporting occurs when an organisation passes on an allegation of child sex abuse, but strips the report of the name of the victim, meaning police are unable to investigate the report.

NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge has obtained documents under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws that, for the first time, reveal the extraordinary extent of blind reporting, which has potentially allowed hundreds of perpetrators to continue to abuse children.