Catholic Church spent $10.6 million to lobby against legislation that would benefit victims of child sex abuse

BY CHRISTINA CAPATIDES

A new report released Tuesday reveals that, over the past eight years, the Catholic Church has spent $10.6 million in the northeastern United States to fight legislation that would help victims of clergy sexual abuse seek justice.

"At the most basic level, we were inspired by frustration," says attorney Gerald Williams, a partner at Williams Cedar, one of four law firms that jointly commissioned the report. "We represent hundreds of people, who have truly been victimized by clergymen in the Catholic Church. We've heard a lot about the church's desire to be accountable and turn over a new leaf. But when we turn to the form where we can most help people and where we can get the most justice — the courts of justice — the church has been there blocking their efforts."

In New York, for example, the Catholic Church spent $2,912,772 lobbying against the Child Victims Act, which Governor Andrew Cuomo ultimately signed into law on February 14, 2019. The act gives survivors more time to seek justice against their abusers, increasing the age at which victims are able to sue from 23 to 55.

Similarly, in Pennsylvania — where in 2018 a grand jury report detailed evidence of more than 300 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children — the Catholic Church spent $5,322,979 lobbying to keep current restrictions in place on the statute of limitations in which victims can seek criminal or civil charges against their abusers.

The report, CHURCH INFLUENCING STATE: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse, was commissioned by Seeger Weiss LLP, Williams Cedar LLC, Abraham Watkins and the Simpson Tuegel Law Firm and is believed to be the most comprehensive analysis of the Church's campaign to fight statute of limitations legislation. COURTESY WILLIAMS CEDAR LLC

The funneling of such a large chunk of money to the Church's lobbying arm, the Catholic Conference Policy Group, with the intention of combating reform that would benefit sexual abuse victims seems directly counter to recent statements the Church has made publicly, vowing to take accountability.

In August 2018, Pope Francis himself said, "The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults."

However, according to the report, "CHURCH INFLUENCING STATE: How the Catholic Church Spent Millions Against Survivors of Clergy Abuse," the Catholic Church has not only continued to invest in lobbying against the interests of victims, their investments in this area have actually increased over the years.

"CHURCH INFLUENCING STATE" / COURTESY WILLIAMS CEDAR LLC

"They make a lot of positive statements, but when the Churchliterally puts its money where its mouth is, it's on the side of self-protection and not help for the survivors," Williams told CBS News. "I believe the church has a long way to go to show that it stands with survivors. I believe that these data indicate that it's not standing with the survivors, that in fact it's standing against the survivors."

The data in the report is based entirely on public filings in the individual states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. And Williams believes it's "likely" that at least some of the money used by the Catholic Church to combat extending the statute of limitations for survivors came from Sunday collections from the faithful.

"It's hard for us to tell just from the raw numbers, but it's likely," he says. "We can't say for certain where the money comes from. We can only say that it's a lot of money that could be spent for more constructive purposes."

Every proposed amendment detailed in the report would benefit all victims of child sex abuse, not only those abused at the hands of the Church. And yet, more than $10 million of the Catholic Church's money has now gone to fighting statute of limitation extensions for those victims, as well.

"I hope, frankly, that Catholics who come across this report take away from it the same thing that I take away from it, as a Catholic born-and-raised person myself," Williams told CBS News. "I had 16 years of Catholic education. Catholicism teaches a lot of important and noble values, but the institution has really acted in ways contradicting those values. So, what I take away from this are really two emotions: sadness and anger. The sadness is a little stronger even than the anger. But maybe if Catholics themselves get angry about this, then maybe the institution itself will change… It just has to change. And that has to start with members of the church."

At the time of this article publishing, neither the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, nor the Archdiocese of New York had responded to CBS News' request for comment.

How Catholic Church used treatment centers to protect priests accused of child abuse

Monsignor William Lynn was the first U.S. Catholic Church official to be convicted of covering up clergy sex abuse.  After Pennsylvania's Supreme Court vacated Lynn’s conviction, he faces another trial this year.  (AP file photo)

In 1995, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned an internal church study on child abuse. The two-volume study surveyed bishops in more than 100 dioceses nationwide about their use of treatment centers to assess and care for priests believed to be sexually abusing children.

The result: 87% of bishops (127 out of 145 dioceses surveyed) reported using treatment centers for clergy accused of child abuse.

Two decades later, following the August release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report on sex abuse in the Catholic Church — one of three released by the state attorney general since early 2000  — dioceses in multiple states and at least one state attorney general have disclosed their own lists of credibly accused priests.

The Pennsylvania report focuses on many small towns throughout the state.  One of those towns — mentioned more than a dozen times — is an outlier. It’s a town you wouldn’t think to look for unless, like me, you were born and raised there.

In 2002, around the same time the Boston Globe published its bombshell report on sexual abuse of children in Archdiocese of Boston, I was a freshman at Bishop Shanahan, a Catholic high school in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.

I don’t remember paying much attention to the Boston Globe report. Nor was I aware that, during this same time, multiple priests accused of child abuse were being sent to a clergy treatment center directly across the street from my high school.

Downingtown is home to the longest-running behavioral health facility in North America still in use by the Catholic Church. It’s a place where  —  according to the reports  —  at least 50 priests accused of molesting children in Pennsylvania were referred for evaluation and treatment.

That treatment time was often referred to in their employment history as “sick leave,” and many priests were inevitably discharged and permitted to return to active ministry. Others were transferred to church-run retirement homes where they received fully paid benefits. The church commonly called that retreat a “life of prayer and penance.”

St. John Vianney Center
Founded in 1946, the St. John Vianney Center in Downingtown is staffed by clergy, psychologists, and nurses. It offers inpatient and outpatient services for behavioral and emotional issues, addiction, compulsive behaviors, and weight management. It is fully funded and administered under the purview of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

In detail, the grand jury report  — much like the 1995 USCCB study  — offers rare insight into the church’s use of “treatment” centers, the psychiatric facilities for clergy with addiction, depression, and sexual disorders, among other conditions. According to the grand jury report, the Catholic Church used these treatment centers to “launder accused priests, provide plausible deniability, and permit hundreds of known offenders to return to ministry.”

The report goes on further to state that Catholic bishops relied on three treatment centers in particular: Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico; St. Luke’s in Suitland, Maryland; and St. John
Vianney Center. All three remain open.

Downingtown, less than an hour south of Philadelphia, is no stranger to scandal involving the church. Most recently, in 2017, a pastor at the nondenominational Calvary Fellowship Church, across the street from Downingtown East High School, pleaded guilty to institutional sex assault, corruption of minors, and child
endangerment after sexually assaulting and impregnating a teenage girl. He was sentenced to up to six years in prison.

Five years earlier,  Monsignor William Lynn  —  who was serving at St. Joseph’s parish across the street from Downingtown West High School  —  became the first high-ranking U.S. Catholic Church official to be convicted of covering up clergy sex abuse. In addition to three priests and a parochial school teacher, Lynn was
charged and convicted of one count of endangering the welfare of a child. He is now free after serving nearly three years of his three- to six-year sentence. He may face another trial on the charges this year.

St. Joseph’s Church in Downingtown remains the second largest parish in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The recently renovated facade, with its towering white steeple, sits just off Route 322. Every Sunday, parishioners fill the parking lot before Mass. Every summer, the same lot is transformed into the annual Community Festival: a five-day carnival that is a hallmark of the small suburb.

On the opposite side of town is St. John Vianney Center. Unlike St. Joseph’s parish, on display as a beacon to area Catholics, the treatment center is hidden from public view. It sits at the end of a long driveway at the top of a hill, surrounded by trees and nestled between a country club and Bishop Shanahan High School across the street.

The only clue toward its existence is a small sign outside the entrance. It’s a fitting appearance for a place shrouded in a culture of secrecy characteristic of the church itself.

 A look at two cases
One of the four men charged along with Lynn  in 2012 was the Rev. Edward Avery, who  received treatment at St. John Vianney over the course of four days from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 1992. Following his evaluation, the treatment center recommended further in-patient care. Philadelphia Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who had allowed Avery to remain in active ministry for nearly 11 months after his victim first reported the abuse to the archdiocese, approved the recommendation.

Avery was discharged from St. John Vianney on Oct. 22, 1993. In a memo to the church, Lynn shared the treatment center’s recommendations for Avery, which included a ministry excluding adolescents and with a population other than vulnerable minorities. The treatment center also advised that an aftercare team supervise Avery.

Yet Lynn recommended that Avery return to a parish with an elementary school, and Bevilacqua ultimately agreed. Avery would later testify before the grand jury that he continued to celebrate Mass, with altar servers, usually twice a weekend. He heard the confessions of children and was never told to restrict his activities with the youth of the parish.

The aftercare team that was supposed to be supervising Avery didn’t meet with him for more than a year after he ended treatment. Furthermore, the chaplain at St. John Vianney warned Lynn that Avery was “neglecting his duties” and instead “booking numerous disc jockey engagements” to gain access to children. Avery remained in active ministry until Dec. 5, 2003, a decade after first receiving treatment.

Avery’s case is one of many revealing exactly how the Catholic Church used St. John Vianney and other treatment centers to launder accused priests and, in some cases, return them to ministry in defiance of the treatment center’s own recommendations.

And while it’s worth noting that many of the allegations contained within the grand jury report are from decades ago, the case studies involving treatment centers cover allegations ranging from as early as the 1960s to as recent as 2004.

In a separate case, on April 22, 2004, diocesan documents show that Pennsylvania State Police searched the room of the Rev. Ronald Yarrosh  —  then assistant pastor at St. Ambrose in Schuylkill Haven  —  and found a “tremendous amount” of child pornography.

A week later, he was suspended from ministry and placed into treatment at St. John Vianney.

Across the street, I was just about to finish my sophomore year of high school.

On May 12, 2004, State Police filed charges: 110 counts of sexual abuse of children.  Yarrosh was sentenced pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement that included three to 23 months in prison. He was discharged from St. John Vianney on May 3, 2005, and was later incarcerated for nearly four months until his release on Dec. 6, 2005, as a convicted and registered sex offender.

According to the grand jury report, upon his release, Yarrosh remained a member of the priesthood and the diocese granted him residence at a retirement home for priests in Orwigsburg — only a few miles from St. Ambrose parish where he had been arrested two years earlier.

In 2006, according to the grand jury report, Yarrosh took trips to New York City with a 7-year-old. Yarrosh was also found to be in possession of pornography in violation of his court supervision. He was sentenced to
four to 10 years in state prison. In June 2007, the Yarrosh was finally dismissed from the priesthood.

The current president of St. John Vianney, David Shellenberger, did not return requests for an interview.

Time for a mea culpa:

I’ve driven past St. John Vianney hundreds of times in my life. I spent four years, every day, directly across the street. And yet, I never knew what that place was until I discovered it on my own, by accident, reading the grand jury report.

Much like the abusive priests written about in the reports, the truth was always hiding in plain sight. If the Catholic Church is serious about reform within the priesthood, it will do more than simply condemn the accused.

The church must acknowledge and recognize that bishops across the country have, for decades, institutionalized a culture that not only fosters abusive priests but also aims to protect the accused and silence victims. Simply put, the only reason child abuse has become an epidemic is because the Catholic Church has allowed it to happen.

What the #MeToo era revealed, beyond a litany of heinous acts committed by sexual predators, is that the allegations themselves rarely tell the full story. Instead — whether it be the Catholic Church or Michael Jackson or Jeffrey Epstein — the full story often involves those in power exploiting their influence and privilege to circumvent the criminal justice system and maintain the appearance of infallibility.

Perhaps the first step toward reform in the Catholic Church is a collective confirmation that members of the clergy are no more pious than anyone else. They are, in fact, only human — some of them deeply flawed — and all of them in need of self-reflection.

Perhaps, a life of prayer and penance is in order.

Top Catholic cardinal admits church destroyed documents on clergy sexual abuse

By Daniel Burke and Rosa Flores, CNN

In a remarkable admission, German Cardinal Reinhard Marx said Saturday that documents that could have contained proof of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church were destroyed or never drawn up.

"Files that could have documented the terrible deeds and named those responsible were destroyed or not even created," said Marx, the archbishop of Munich and president of the German Bishops' Conference.

"The stipulated procedures and processes for the prosecution offenses were deliberately not complied with," he added, "but instead canceled and overridden.

"Such standard practices will make it clear that it is not transparency which damages the church, but rather the acts of abuse committed, the lack of transparency, or the ensuing coverup."

Marx's stunning admission came on the third day of a historic Vatican summit focused on combating clergy sexual abuse. The day's theme was transparency, which Marx said could help to tackle abuse of power.

A member of Pope Francis' inner circle of advisers, Marx is one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church.

The four-day summit of 190 Catholic leaders, including 114 bishops from around the world, will conclude Sunday with an address by Pope Francis. On Thursday, at the beginning of the unprecedented summit, Francis urged the bishops to take "concrete measures" to combat the clergy abuse scandal.

At a press conference later Saturday, Marx said that the information about destroying files came from a study commissioned by German bishops in 2014. The study was "scientific" and did not name the particular church leaders or dioceses in Germany that destroyed the files.

"The study indicates that some documents were manipulated or did not contain what they should have contained," Marx said. "The fact in itself cannot be denied."

Marx said he doubts the destruction of files related to clergy sexual abuse was limited to one diocese.

"I assume Germany is not an isolated case."

The report commissioned by the German bishops also revealed that "at least" 3,677 cases of child sex abuse by German clergy occurred between 1946 and 2014.


CNN's Lauren Said-Moorhouse and Livvy Doherty contributed to this report.

Convicted in child porn case, rogue priest still preaches as he crafts his own narrative

Brandie Kessler and Dylan Segelbaum, York Daily Record

The general's report comes after years of state and local law enforcement uncovering cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic church.

Nate Chute, IndyStar

The Catholic church kicked him out. He is among 301 "predator priests" named by a grand jury. But he still leads a Catholic church in York County.

A York Daily Record/Sunday News investigation shows how he has tried to discredit the conviction.

He tells supporters various stories about why he was convicted of a crime.

Harry Spencer realized that he was home.

He’d grown uncomfortable with the direction of the Catholic Church, particularly since Vatican II. The doctrines had changed. The Mass had changed. So had all the traditions and rituals.

Then, about seven years ago, Spencer started going to what would become St. Michael the Archangel Roman Catholic Church in Lower Windsor Township. It offers a traditional Latin Mass. The Rev. Virgil Tetherow, also known as Father Gabriel, leads the church.

“I have never met a priest that I’ve felt more comfortable with in his religiosity and his ability to teach the religion of the Roman Catholic faith,” Spencer said. “I love my religion. And Father Tetherow is a true Catholic priest.”

But that is not what the Catholic church says.

In fact, Tetherow “is not recognized as a priest, is prohibited from presenting himself as clergy and is not associated with the Diocese of Harrisburg,” said Mike Barley, a spokesman for the diocese, who encouraged the faithful to not attend Tetherow's services.

Tetherow, 54, is among 301 “predator priests” named in the recent landmark grand jury report that details widespread sexual abuse in six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania. He was arrested in 2005 after police found child pornography on two computers and he later pleaded guilty to criminal use of a communication facility.

In a statement provided to the grand jury, he maintains his conviction isn't what it seems and that the grand jury report distorts the public record. He’s never been accused of physical sexual abuse of children.

Many of the clergy named in the almost 900-page report are dead. But Tetherow, who declined to be interviewed, is still actively running a church — and there’s nothing, and apparently no one, that can prevent him from doing so. A York Daily Record/Sunday News investigation based on dozens of interviews, Right-to-Know Law requests, court records and secret canonical letters reveals how he’s been able to weave a narrative to discredit the conviction and keep loyal followers in his flock.

READ: 'Punished' for being sexually abused in York County: Jehovah's Witnesses' culture of cover-up.

The Catholic Church’s grim history of ignoring priestly pedophilia

Father Kris Stubna walks to the sanctuary following a mass to celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary at St Paul Cathedral, the mother church of the Diocese on August 15, 2018 in Pittsburgh. (Getty/Jeff Swensen)

A comprehensive history of pedophilia in the Catholic Church from the 1950s to the 2002 Boston Globe investigation

BRIAN CLITES

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Widespread public shock followed the recent release of the Pennsylvania grand jury report that identified more than 1,000 child victims of clergy sexual abuse. In fact, as  know through my research, the Vatican and its American bishops have known about the problem of priestly pedophilia since at least the 1950s. And the Church has consistently silenced would-be whistleblowers from within its own ranks.

In the memory of many Americans, the only comparable scandal was in Massachusetts, where, in 2002, the Boston Globe published more than 600 articles about abuses under the administration of Cardinal Bernard Law. That investigation was immortalized in the 2015 award-winning film, “Spotlight.”

What many Americans don’t remember, however, are other similar scandals, some even more dramatic and national in scope.

Doubling down on secrecy

While the problem of priestly pedophilia might be centuries old, the modern paper trail began only after World War II, when “treatment centers” appeared for rehabilitating abusive priests. Instead of increased transparency, bishops, at the same time, developed methodsfor denying and hiding allegations of child sexual abuse.



During the 1950s and 1960s, bishops from around the U.S. began referring abusive priests to church-run medical centers, so that they could receive evaluation and care without disclosing their crimes to independent clinicians.

Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, who began his ministry in Boston and Quebec, was among those who advocated prayer over medicine. In 1947, Fitzgerald moved to New Mexico and founded the Servants of the Paraclete, a new order of Catholic priests devoted to healing deviant clergy. His belief in faith healing reflected a vocal minority of Catholic leaders who still viewed psychology as a threat to Christian faith.

Fitzgerald based the Paracletes in New Mexico. From 1947 to 1995, the state became a dumping ground for pedophile priests. As Kathleen Holscher, chair of Roman Catholic studies at the University of New Mexico, has observed, this practice forced New Mexico’s parishes to absorb, in effect, abusive priests from across the country.

Other priests sent to the Paracletes were returned back into ministry in their home diocese, reassigned to new parishes that had no way of knowing about their abusive past.



This system was sustained, in part, by the fact that few diocesan personnel files recorded past accusations by children and parents. As Richard Sipe, a psychologist who worked at a similar Catholic treatment center later revealed, bishops generally masked past accusations by instead recording code words like “tickling,” “wrestling” or “entangled friendship” in personnel files.

By 1956, Fitzgerald became convinced that pedophilia could not be treated, even as he continued to believe that prayers could cure other illnesses, such as alcoholism.

He petitioned U.S. bishops to stop sending him their child abusers, advocating instead for firing abusive priests and permanently removing them from ministry.

Fitzgerald eventually appealed directly to the Vatican, and met with Pope Paul VI to discuss the problem in 1963.

Hush money

It is unclear when the Church began using hush settlements to silence victims. The practice, however, was so widespread by the 1980s that the Vatican assigned church lawyers to adjust their insurance policies in order to minimize additional liabilities.

These included Fr. Thomas Doyle, a nonparish priest who specialized in Roman Catholicism’s internal laws; Fr. Michael Petersen, a trained psychiatrist who believed that priests with abusive disorders should be treated medically; and Roy Mouton, a civil attorney who represented one of the church’s most notorious pedophile priests.

Together, they authored a 92-page report and submitted it for presentation at the 1985 meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church’s apparatus for controlling and governing American priests.

The document estimated that American bishops should plan to be sued for at least US$1 billion, and up to $10 billion, over the following decades.

Several of the nation’s most powerful cardinals buried the report.

In response, Doyle mailed all 92 pages, along with an executive summary, to every diocese in the United States. Yet there is no evidence that any bishops headed the report’s warnings.

1992: The nation’s first scandal

During the 1980s, victims began to speak out against the church’s systemic attempts to mask the scope of the crisis. In 1984, survivors of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe refused to be silenced by hush money, instead choosing the painful path of initiating public lawsuits in Louisiana. Gauthe ultimately confessed to abusing 37 children.

As these stories became public, more and more victims began to bring lawsuits against the Church. In Chicago, the nation’s first two clergy abuse survivor organizations, Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse Linkup (LINKUP) and the Survivors’ Network for Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), were created in 1987.

In 1992, survivor Frank Fitzpatrick’s public allegations led to revelations that Fr. James Porter had abused more than 100 other children in Massachusetts. Widespread shock followed at the time as well as after Fitzpatrick’s appearance on ABC’s “Primetime Live,” when news anchor Diane Sawyer interviewed Fitzpatrick and 30 other Porter victims.

The national outcry forced dioceses across the country to create public standards for how they were handling abuse accusations, and American bishops launched new marketing campaigns to regain trust.

In spite of internal pledges to reform their culture of covering up abuses, the Pennsylvania grand jury report demonstrates that the Church’s de facto policy remains unchanged since the 1950s: Instead of reporting rape and sexual abuse to secular authorities, bishops instead continue to transfer predatory priests from one unsuspecting parish to the next.

Victims with no hope of justice

The issue of clergy sex abuse has also unleashed broader questions about justice and faith: Can courtrooms repair souls? How do survivors continue to pray and attend Mass?

As a scholar who studies communities of clergy abuse victims, I have asked Catholics to share their thoughts about the current crisis. Many of them tell me that “at least” Boston’s Cardinal Law “went to jail.” That leads to an awkward moment when I have to refresh their memory.

Cardinal Law was neither indicted nor arrested. Instead, Pope John Paul II transferred Law to run one of the Vatican’s most cherished properties, the Basilica of Saint Mary, essentially rewarding Law for his deft cover-up of the abuses in Boston.

In fact, no American bishops or cardinals have ever been jailed for their role in covering up and enabling child sexual abuse. Civil settlements have held the Church accountable only financially. A combination of political complacency and expired statutes of limitations has prevented most survivors from obtaining real justice.

Outraged by this lack of justice, survivors urged the International Criminal Court at The Hague to investigate the Vatican for crimes against humanity. The International Criminal Court declined, citing the fact that many of the alleged crimes occurred before the court was formed, and were thus beyond the scope of the court’s “temporal jurisdiction.”

To date, the highest-ranking priest tried in an American court is Philadelphia’s Monsignor William Lynn, who was charged with conspiracy and two counts of endangering children. His 2012 conviction for one count of endangerment was vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2016. He now awaits an unscheduled retrial.

Even as scholars and theologians have called for all of the American bishops to resign, there has been little talk of criminal prosecutions. If yesterday’s survivors do not find justice, tomorrow’s children will not know safety.

As the Pennsylvania grand jury emphasized:

“There have been other reports about child sexual abuse within the Catholic church… For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.”

Brian Clites

Catholic Church Paid $213 Million To 4,445 Children Sexually Abused By Pedophile Priests In Australia

These days, the Roman Catholic Church is synonymous with child sexual abuse. We owe nobody an apology for saying this. It's the truth. Cases of child sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups committed during the 20th and 21st centuries by Catholic priests, nuns, and members of the Roman Catholic Order have led to numerous allegations, investigations, trials and convictions. The abused include boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. It is beyond imagination that these so-called men and women of God have molested innocent children in this widespread way. The abuse is a worldwide problem in the church. There aren’t accurate statistics to determine the number of children these pedophiles in the church have abused worldwide because of the extent. From 2001 to 2010, the Holy See, which serves as the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations involving approximately 3,000 priests dating back up to fifty years. Cases worldwide reflect patterns of long-term abuse and of the church hierarchy regularly covering up reports of alleged abuse.

Diocesan officials and academics knowledgeable about the Roman Catholic Church have revealed that sexual abuse by the pedophiles in the church is generally not discussed, and thus is difficult to measure. In 2014, the Vatican said 3,420 credible accusations of sexual abuse committed by priests had been referred to its institution over the past 10 years, and that 824 clerics were defrocked as a result. However, a new investigation carried out in Australia has shed light on the damning practice of Catholic priests and nuns in the country. According to the report, the Catholic Church paid US$213 million to victims of sex abuse committed by priests in Australia over decades. In 2002, a critical investigation by The Boston Globe in the United States led to worldwide media coverage of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. By 2010, much of the reporting focused on abuse in Europe. In 2012, Australia also announced it was to investigate the abuses by the church. By 2013, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced hearings on alleged Catholic Church sex abuse of children – mostly boys. In mid-February 2017, the commission issued a report revealing: “Catholic Church authorities made total payments of [AU]$276.1 million [US$213million] in response to claims of child sexual abuse received between 1 January 1980 and 28 February 2015, including monetary compensation, treatment, legal and other costs.” Of the 4,445 cases the church received between January 1980 and February 2015 in the country, the report said the church managed to identify 1,880 alleged perpetrators, who included 597 (32% ‘religious brothers,’ 572 (30%) priests, 543 (29%) lay people, and 96 (5%) religious sisters or nuns. According to the report, 90% of abusers were male while the abused were also mostly boys. 

According to the commission, sex abuse victims received AU$91,000 in compensation. The report by the commission also stated that the Christian Brothers group admitted during the hearing that both the highest total payment and the largest number of total payments is $48.5 million. It was paid in relation to 763 payments at an average of approximately $64,000 per payment. The Christian Brothers is a worldwide religious community within the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the commission said the Jesuits had the highest average total payment at an average of approximately $257,000 per payment (of those Catholic Church authorities who made at least 10 payments). The Jesuit is an order of religious men in the Roman Catholic Church. Critics, including those in the Catholic Church who want justice for the victims, say the system of payments is unfair and not all victims receive the same opportunities or compensation. The Church's Truth Justice and Healing Council chief executive, Francis Sullivan candidly admitted to local media that not all victims have equal opportunities or compensation. “Even though the church has paid $270 million and it took a long time to get its act together to do that, there's no doubt the system of paying people and compensating them is best done independently of the church through a national redress scheme. Some congregations pay far more than others. Some dioceses pay far more than others. It's still not a fair system,” he added. “It's a picture of great unfairness and inequity between survivors across Australia depending on where they placed their claim,” Helen Last, Chief Executive Officer of In Good Faith Foundation, which represents 460 abuse victims also told the Reuters news agency in an interview. 

Diocese of Temuco opts for transparency strategy: reveals cases of priests involved in sexual abuse

by El Mostrador

Diocese of Temuco opts for transparency strategy: reveals cases of priests involved in sexual abuse:

Through a statement, the bishopric referred to the perpetual expiatory penalties imposed on the priest Pablo Walter Isler Venegas, among whom is established "the prohibition to publicly exercise the priestly ministry and to work pastorally with adolescents and young people."

Through a communiqué, the Diocese of Temuco made public the three most infamous cases of priests involved in cases of sexual abuse against minors.

This after a report from El Mostrador on those episodes that have "crunch" to said diocese and of which the victims have criticized the tendency to the protection that the bishop of said area, Héctor Vargas, deployed in favor of the perpetrators.

A week ago,  El Mostrador  published " The double morality of Bishop Vargas" , a note that referred not only to the non-compliance of the bishop's celibacy, but also to the cases of abuse, which Vargas acknowledged, but in which he denied that there were "protective nets or a cover-up cloak".

One of the most notorious cases was that of priest Pablo Walter Isler Venegas , suspended from the priestly exercise forever. The diocesan, who was also episcopal vicar of Illapel and was a priest of Temuco, after completing a canonical process for sexual abuse of minors, received a clear sanction from Rome: the suspension. He can not publicly exercise the ministry or hold masses, he can not approach children, let alone have a foundation in the name of the Church. This in perpetuity.

In that  communiqué , the diocese referred to the expiatory penalties for the priest, among which is established "the prohibition to publicly exercise the priestly ministry and to work pastorally with adolescents and young people."

Another of the sanctions established was the "definitive prohibition of residing within the territory of the Diocese of San José de Temuco and of visiting without previous and express authorization of the Ordinary, the parishes of Lautaro, Imperial and Traiguén".

"Priest Pablo Walter Isler Venegas is ordered to faithfully fulfill, with religious assent of the understanding and will, the canonical sanctions indicated in this decree," it is indicated.

The public statement states that the process began in 2011, during the previous administration, when they received the first complaints.

"The priest Pablo Walter Isler Venegas, since 2003 was outside the Diocese of Temuco, carrying out various pastoral experiences in the Illapel Prelature," he explains.

The diocese also unveiled two other similar cases that equally involve priests. This is Juan Carlos Mercado Elgueta, who in the middle of 2013, after the previous investigation as a result of the complaint of sexual abuse of minors, submitted his resignation to the priestly ministry, and José Vicente Bastías Ñanco, who is currently facing a process canonical penalty for sexual abuse of minors, according to what is established with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and is temporarily suspended from the public exercise of the ministry.

"We take advantage of reiterating the firm disposition of the diocesan Bishop to assume the challenges that Pope Francis has asked for, in the sense of ensuring healthy, safe and reliable spaces in the Church for children and young people," the statement ends.