Quote of Note
"The sexual abuse
and exploitation of children is one of the most vicious crimes
conceivable, a violation of mankind's most basic duty
to protect the
innocent." - James T. Walsh
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ntelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Jul 16, 2010 12:44 EST
Two Lancaster men face sexual abuse charges related to child pornography, city police said Friday.
Police identified them as James Joseph Kemps, 44, and Edward Joseph White, 54, both of the 300 block of Church Street.
Over the last 27 months, city detectives, assisted by the Delaware County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, United States Postal Inspectors, state police, Philadelphia Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory and Lancaster County detectives, conducted two separate investigations targeting the possession and distribution of child pornography.
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Published: July 16, 2010
Letters To the Editor:New York Times
Re “The Pope’s Duty” (editorial, July 9):
While the Vatican has initiated several actions to increase the efficiency of its internal procedures dealing with child sex abuse by its clergy, this should not lead anyone to believe that the Holy See will now be a force in assisting victims and punishing perpetrators and abettors to these heinous crimes.
As you correctly point out, guidelines are not mandates, and without such directives from the pope, abusers and those who have assisted them will continue to thrive while victims suffer in silence and ignominy.
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Published: July 17, 2010, 12:30 am
The Buffalo News
LOCKPORT—A Town of Lockport resident faces child sex abuse charges following a joint investigation of the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s Office.
Michael P. Walleshauser, 50, was arrested Friday on charges of predatory sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual act and attempted sexual abuse. He is currently being held in Niagara County Jail without bail.
Walleshauser has been active in area Boy Scout organizations for more than 20 years, said sheriff’s officials, who addded that none of the currently known victims are affiliated with Boy Scouts.
WSVN News
Posted: 07/16/10 at 7:10 am EDT
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) -- A former South Florida music teacher accused of sexually abusing a student has been sentenced to life in prison.
Sandeep Munshi was convicted of repeatedly sexually abusing a 10-year-old student during her weekly lessons Thursday. Munshi rejected a plea deal that would have sent him to prison for 15 years. The jury's decision evoked different emotions from both sides. "Justice was served today. We're happy. I really believe in the court system today," said the victim's father.
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A prominent Southern Illinois pastor and community leader has been charged with a child-sex crime and is jailed.
BY MARK FITTON, The Southern, IL
Posted: Thursday, July 15, 2010 5:53 pm
The Rev. Bill Vandergraph, pastor of Full Gospel Pentecostal Church and president of the Friends of the Cross fundraising organization, was taken into custody Wednesday night after an investigation by the Illinois State Police and Union County Sheriff's Office, according Union County State's Attorney Tyler Edmonds.
Vandergraph, who was arrested Wednesday evening, is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, a Class X felony. He remained jailed Thursday afternoon in lieu of $500,000 bond. He is to appear in Union County Court this morning before Judge Mark Boie.
Vandergraph, 72, of rural Alto Pass has retained or is retaining an attorney, Edmonds said, although he did not know the defense attorney's name late Thursday afternoon.
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Sat Jul 17, 2010 1:05am IST
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German Lutheran bishop resigned on Friday following a report she had allowed a pastor accused of sexual abuse of teenagers in her diocese continued contact with youngsters.
In an echo of scandals hitting the Catholic church, Spiegel news magazine reported last week that Bishop Maria Jepsen, 65, heard in 1999 that the pastor had abused teenagers in his care, but let him stay in contact with youngsters until 2000.
At a news conference, Jepsen, who became the world's first female Lutheran bishop in 1992, did not say when she first heard the allegations, but said she felt her credibility was now in question.
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By Associated Press | Thursday, July 15, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
SPRINGFIELD - A former Roman Catholic bishop in the Springfield diocese repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a deposition in a lawsuit filed by a man who alleges he was molested by a known pedophile priest.
The Most Rev. Thomas Dupre testified in a lawsuit by Andrew Nicastro, who says now-defrocked priest Alfred Graves molested him in Williamstown in the 1980s. Nicastro alleges that then-Bishop Joseph Maguire, and Dupre, his subordinate, knew Graves had abused other boys but assigned him to the church anyway.
Dupre later became bishop but resigned after an unrelated child sex abuse indictment in 2004. He was never prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.
Nicastro’s lawyer, John Stobierski, is seeking the release of a videotape of Dupre’s deposition. A written transcript released by Stobierski on Thursday shows Dupre taking the Fifth Amendment to nearly all questions during more than two hours of testimony.
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(AFP) – VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is "missing the boat" with new rules published Thursday on the handling of cases of sex abuse by priests, a US-based advocacy group said.
"The guidelines are like attacking at an elephant with a pea-shooter when the elephant is almost out of range," the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement.
"Even if these new guidelines are obeyed, their impact on the ongoing crisis is likely to be insignificant," it added after the Vatican ordered quicker investigations of paedophile priests and extended the statute of limitations.
"Across the globe, top Catholic officials ... deceive or stonewall law enforcement officials, let known predators live unsupervised instead of putting them in treatment centers (and) vigorously oppose any meaningful secular efforts to expose Church wrongdoers," SNAP said.
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By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
July 15, 2010, 8:40PM
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican revised its in-house rules to deal with clerical sex abuse cases Thursday, targeting priests who molest the mentally disabled as well as children and doubling the statute of limitations for such crimes.
Abuse victims said the rules are little more than administrative housekeeping since they made few substantive changes to current practice, and what is needed are bold new rules to punish bishops who shield pedophiles.
Women's ordination groups criticized the new rules because they included the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.
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Bradley laws add scrutiny; some fear little will change
By CRIS BARRISH
The News Journal
July 5, 2010
With near-lightning speed for Delaware's often-ponderous government, the colossal breakdown in the oversight of pediatrician Earl B. Bradley, who allegedly molested dozens of patients, has led to sweeping changes in laws that govern how doctors are monitored, investigated and disciplined.
Lawmakers, politicians and child advocates said the changes have been long in coming and should help identify aberrant doctors and protect boys and girl from abuse.
"The Bradley bills give us new tools to more effectively investigate doctors accused of wrongdoing,'' said James L. Collins, director of the state Division of Professional Regulation, which oversees the renamed Board of Medical Licensure and Discipline, formerly the Board of Medical Practice.
Lawmakers acted on recommendations in two state reports triggered by News Journal reports detailing the failures to stop Bradley.
Some, however, don't think the reforms go far enough.
While they acknowledged that more doctors and medical professionals might be persuaded by the prospect of a hefty fine and other discipline to report a colleague, they said the culture of secrecy and protection among doctors must change. The silence and inaction of doctors who were told of Bradley's suspicious behavior allowed him to allegedly abuse children over a 10-year period despite five separate investigations since he came to Delaware in 1994.
"The legislation mostly revolves around creating a better system for complaints and beefing up the laws that people are going to have to follow about making a report" to the medical board, said Karen Derasmo, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Delaware. "Initially, everybody is going to be on hyper-alert but there's always going to be that good-old-boy system, and that's really unfortunate."
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jgarza@sacbee.com
Published Wednesday, Jun. 30, 2010
A Sacramento attorney is trying an unusual tactic in the ongoing litigation over clergy sexual abuse: He is suing California Catholic Church leaders for fraud and negligence.
Joseph George has filed two suits claiming church leaders acted fraudulently by allowing priests to continue to serve after their alleged crimes were reported.
In the past, attorneys representing victims – including George – have sued for sexual misconduct or battery. The fraud suits are believed to be the first of their kind in the state.
George said the suits are based on the church not doing what the church leaders promised.
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By RACHEL ZOLL (AP) – July 4, 2010
NEW YORK — At the peak of the Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis, the discipline plan American bishops adopted prompted dioceses to remove nearly all accused clergy from the priesthood.
Some of the men, however, were considered too old or sick to be kicked out. Instead, bishops barred those clerics from functioning as priests and promised to keep watch over them in supervisory programs that would keep the men far from children.
But interviews with canon lawyers, church child protection officials and experts who advise them found that, eight years after the plan was approved, few of those diocesan programs exist. Church leaders are more likely to oust a cleric from the priesthood than monitor him.
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By WALTER MENYA
The Daily Nation Kenya
Posted Saturday, June 19 2010 at 20:11
The Teachers’ Service Commission recently said it had dismissed 600 teachers over allegations of sexual abuse. But dismissal may be their only punishment due to loopholes in the law, even though rape is a criminal offence.
The TSC Act does not give the commission the mandate to pursue a case of rape or sexual abuse beyond the professional level, and recent efforts to do so are already facing opposition from the Kenya National Union of Teachers.
TSC chairman Ibrahim Hussein said the commission’s hands are tied by the Act. “It is a big challenge because our mandate does not allow us to hand over the suspects to the police, a duty that we have left to parents or guardians, the school boards of governors and the administration,” he said.
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By GEORGE MUNENE
The Daily Nation Kenya
Posted Sunday, June 13 2010 at 00:00
Six hundred teachers have been sacked in the past five years countrywide in connection with sexual relationships with school girls.
The pests were sent packing after it was established that they had sexual relationships with their female pupils and students.
According to the chairman of the Teachers’ Service Commission, Mr Ibrahim Hussein, the teachers committed a serious crime and they had to be relieved of their duties.
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by Tom Roberts on Jul. 02, 2010
NCR Today
The wide-lens view of today's New York Times' dig into the dense and logic-defying maze of church law and bureaucracy is the latest needed bit of light shed on a culture that struggles today to find its way clear of the sex abuse crisis.
The interviews with archbishops and bishops and their recollections of the tone of a secret Vatican meeting in 2000 are telling indicators of how aware the Vatican was of the scope of the scandal, of what it could do about it, of its unwillingness to confront the problem and of the ridiculous nature of analyses offered by some at the highest echelons of church governance.
Anyone mildly familiar with church culture – with rectories and seminaries and the workings of the local diocese – was aware that bad actors were being shielded and that victims of sometimes horrific abuse were being marginalized and re-victimized with countersuits and public disparagement.
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