The courts giveth and the Vatican taketh away: Pope Francis’ lawyers strike a blow against children

Digital Journal reporter Yukio Strachan wrote (12/26/13):  “In a shocking blow to victims of child sexual abuse and their advocates, a Roman Catholic Church senior official who was found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse for years had his conviction overturned Thursday by a Pennsylvania appeals court.”  Why would a court overturn this landmark conviction?  

 

Last year, when the priest, William J. Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was found guilty, survivors and advocates against clergy sexual abuse felt that “justice was served for the hell that victims and their families were put through because of the negligence of priests like Lynn who put the protection of predator priests over the protection of vulnerable children,” Strachan reported.

 

A three-judge Superior Court panel interpreted as valid an old law stating that:  A parent, guardian or other person supervising the welfare of a child had to be directly supervising the child. A new revision of the law says that a person that employs or supervises someone who directly supervised a child is also guilty. But the three judges reversed the previous decision of Judge M. Teresa Sarmina who had said that the new law applied to Lynn.

 

The Digital Journal article quoted Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests SNAP):  “We felt that this conviction sent a very strong message that if you protect predators, you would be punished.  "We hoped it would cause other prosecutors to go after other people protecting pedophiles. We thought it was a trend, a start." SNAP was heartsick and so am I.  

 

While the Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams strongly disagreed with the decision and will appeal it, continuing this fight is a hardship for all of the good people who want to stop child abuse by the catholic church. The church has deep pockets to hire all the lawyers it needs – all those donations from the faithful are put to whatever use the church decides.  Individual victims and advocate organizations like SNAP stretch their limited resources but they keep fighting because no one is more important than the children.

 

Take a Vatican quiz (Pope Francis can answer too)

Which is worse?

1.    Pedophile priests loose in the parish

2.    Priests who cover up for pedophile priests (like William Lynn in Philadelphia)

3.    Judges who overturn priests’ sexual abuse convictions (like John T. Bender)

Who do you choose?  In all three cases the priests are still out there molesting children. The next post will give you more information about these pedophile enablers.

Will Pope Francis stick to his guns or to pillows?

The New York Times commented that after decades of vatican indifference and evasion, Pope Francis has created a commission to study the rape and intimidation of schoolchildren by priests. The new commission, “long overdue”, says the Times, will come up with specific recommendations for firmer safeguarding of schoolchildren and better training of catholic priests.  Francis had to do something after vatican officials refused to answer the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on how the church handled the scandal – the church of course had blamed the bishops and local criminal justice authorities.

The vatican has created commissions before to look at child abuse by clergy, but so far they have only tried to cover up or protect their criminals.  One study panel created more than a decade ago reported on the abuse of schoolchildren in the U.S., a scandal in which 700 priests had to be dismissed in a three-year period. Although they recommend that "there must be consequences" for church leaders who shielded offending priests there was no way decided on how to make powerful diocesan offenders accountable so only a few leaders faced criminal investigation.

This latest attempt offers no assurance to parents that Francis will order greater accountability from those who covered up criminal abuse of children. It is also missing the rest of the iceberg:  the abuse that took or takes place in catholic “homes” for orphaned and  neglected children – most of it done by nuns. And they did more than just rape and beat children.  The Dominican nuns at St. Agnes Home in Sparkill, NY smothered me and put me in a coma. Gilbert Bonneau was also smothered (with a witness) with a pillow like I was -- by a nun at St. Colman’s home in Watervliet, NY. He was in a coma and died. See post of July 30, 2013: Catholic nuns do more than abuse children: they murder them. But I lived.

The reason I lived is to share this information with you and with everyone. Gilbert’s family is still fighting.  His brother Bill recently said to me: “Keep up the fight (George) you are doing a great job exposing the Evil Catholic Church and their phony Priest, Nuns, Brothers Etc. People are catching on. They did a job on you and the Nuns killed my brother, I will keep on fighting until my last breath to get justice for Gilbert. Sooner or later the truth will come out. Hang in there. Bill”   Like Bill, we need to keep revealing the truth to the world so they won’t forget Gilbert and the thousands like him who died in silence.

Christmas card from Dominican Nuns to their victims: what the Pope doesn’t want you to know.

I received a card of Christmas Blessings: the Dominican nuns at Sparkill, NY are praying for children who lived at the St. Agnes Home.  They say living at the home deepened our faith in God.  I lived at the home when I was 3 and a half years old. They beat me every day and when I was too damaged to respond, one of them smothered me with a pillow. I was in a coma for almost a year.  Yes, living there deepened my faith in God because I lived. The power of God was stronger than their murderous hands.  

Let them pray for their sins and the sins of the pope and the rest of his henchmen who allowed and covered up widespread child abuse by nuns and clergy.  Do they send the cards to remind us of what they did? Do they think we will donate to support their evil habits? We can better use our resources to stop the church’s continued abuse of children around the world.  We can work together to stop them.  We need a reckoning.

Pope Francis in good company with Hitler, Stalin, Khrushchev and the Ayatollah Khomeini

So Pope Francis made the cover of Time magazine.  As Jeff Schweitzer says in his Huffington Post article (see link), so did Adolf Hitler (1938), Joseph Stalin twice (1939 and 1942), Nikita Khrushchev (1957), and Ayatollah Khomeini (1979).  It is time that everyone realizes what Mr. Schweitzer is saying –that Pope Francis has been giving us circuses (without the bread) and cares more for his image than the lives of people who suffer worldwide.  His continued support of pedophile priests rubs salt into the wounds of those of us, like myself, who were victims of rapist priests and abusive nuns.  I try my best to get the message to you the readers of my blog.  As survivors, we need journalists like Mr. Schweitzer to open the eyes of those blinded by photo ops and magazine covers.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/not-anywhere-close-to-per_b_4429185.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Vatican eats cake and dodges United Nations Child Sex Abuse Questions

With so much practice dodging questions about who in the catholic church is responsible for sexually abusing children it was easy for the vatican to do it again. On Tuesday the vatican dodged questions from a United Nations committee on clerical sexual abuse. The Associated Press reporter Nicole Winfield who has followed vatican escapades in the past said that this time the Holy See claimed that it doesn’t control the actions of every Catholic in the world, and every Catholic priest, parish or school. They said that local bishops are ultimately responsible for keeping children safe from pedophile priests.

But the vatican flip flops:  whichever statement fits the purpose of the day is what you hear. In 2001, the vatican took over handling of abuse cases because it said that bishops were failing to do their jobs. Now they are back to insisting that the ultimate responsibility still lies with the bishops. But if the vatican doesn’t control them why does it fire bishops – at least some bishops: In July 2012 (Winfield, AP), the previous pope fired a Slovak bishop for mismanaging his diocese and other bishops in Australia the Congo and Italy who wanted the church to ordain women and married men. But would he fire bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests asked Winfield?  We don’t see that happening.

Even while defending itself against lawsuits and accusations that it was church policies and a culture of secrecy that allowed thousands of children to be abused by priests over decades the vatican is still claiming that they were not to blame.

We can see how much they are not concerned about protecting children: the UN in 1989 implemented the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the main UN treaty guaranteeing a full range of human rights for children.  It wasn’t until 1990 that the Holy See endorsed the convention and they waited until 1994 to submit their first report on what they were doing to comply with the treaty. Then for almost a decade there were no reports. Finally, after media pressure due to the 2010 explosion of child sex abuse cases in Europe and around the world they waited until last year and submitted one report.

So while children were continuing to be sexually abused, the vatican took its time. They actually said that the only country they are responsible for is the vatican state in the center of Rome where a total of 31 children under age 18 currently live. Given their lack of responsibility and history of child abuse there should be a law that no child should live that close to them.

David Clohessy of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) said that the vatican wants "to have their cake and eat it too" by changing their definition of the church, sometimes saying it was run from the top-down  and other times stating that only local dioceses have control over their employees.

"It's a shame that, once again, top Catholic officials successfully exploit legal technicalities to keep clergy sex crimes and cover ups covered up," Clohessy said. "The truth is that the Vatican oversees the church worldwide, insisting on secrecy in child sex cases and stopping or delaying the defrocking of pedophile priests."

Pope Francis: stop giving the faithful bread and circuses – give the children justice!

 

 

Pope Francis in mafia crosshairs

In our September 9, and October 20 posts we talked about the Vatican Bank and its dealings with terrorists and the mafia.  The cozy history of the vatican and the mafia is coming back to bite or do worse to pope francis.  Since the money laundering schemes have been in the news so often and because an investigation is ongoing by the European anti-money laundering committee Moneyval, pope francis has been verbal about how he will clean up the bank.

Francis called on the mafia to repent for “exploiting and enslaving people” in his sermons. Of course he “forgets” that under vatican protection abusive pedophile nuns and priests have been exploiting and enslaving children for 2,000 years. He never talks about those facts.

The pope’s defenses are supposed to be the best – he spends enough of our money on personal guards – but that might not be enough to prevent him from being a mafia target.

One of Italy's best known anti-mob prosecutors Nicola Gratteri, who has lived under police protection for nearly 25 years, said the “Jesuit Pope's” clean-up plans were upsetting powerful Italian crime organizations in Italy.

"I don't know if organised crime is in a position to do something, but certainly they are thinking about it. It could be dangerous (for the pope).” If the bosses could take him down they would not hesitate,” Gratteri told 'Il Fatto Quotidiano', an Italian daily newspaper.

The mafia donates money to the church, they sponsor catholic religious festivals and pay for local church repairs. They even pay to be buried on church property (see post August 10). So the mafia has always expected the church to keep silent and support their money laundering and other banking activities.

Asked if the mafia would dare try to assassinate the pope, Antonio Nicaso, an expert on organized crime in Italy told CNN, "There are so many ways to kill a pope. They have to be careful. But in the history of organized crime, whenever they had to remove an obstacle, they never thought about the consequences." 

What does the shooting spree at Los Angeles International airport have to do with pedophile catholic priests?

Today John (Kip) Heeney passed away. He was a survivor that lived a troubled life as a result of being sexually abused by a Catholic priest when he was a student at Salesianum High School in Wilmington, Delaware.  

Today a young man, 23 yrs. old shot and killed a transit officer at Los Angeles airport and wounded two others.  This what the article said about the killer:

He was identified later by the FBI as Paul Anthony Ciancia, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles. He graduated in 2008 from Salesianum School, an all-boys Catholic school in Wilmington, Delaware, according to school President Brendan P. Kennealey.

I wonder if going to that school had anything to do with what this person did.  It seems like more than a coincidence.  What do you think?