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DENISON, TX -- A former Denison ISD teacher was arrested after police say she admitted to having an improper relationship with one of her students. Some of those encounters reportedly happened in the classroom. "I've heard stories, like I've seen across the nation of it happening in other places, but I never expected it to happen here," said parent, Amy Timberlake. Parents we spoke to say they can't believe 34-year-old Julie Bollinger, a former Denison High School teacher, was arrested for having an improper relationship with a student. "It is a crime for a teacher to have a relationship with...

A Roman Catholic archbishop in Minnesota who had been one of the hierarchy’s most vocal opponents of gay rights is the target of an investigation into allegations that he had a series of sexual relationships with priests, seminarians and other men. The investigation of Twin Cities Archbishop John Nienstedt is being conducted by a prominent Minneapolis law firm hired by the archdiocese after church officials received an allegation against Nienstedt. The archdiocese confirmed the investigation, which was first reported by Commonweal, a Catholic magazine based in New York.... Commonweal’s story cites Jennifer Haselberger, former top canon lawyer for Nienstedt, as...

Boz Tchividjian Says Churches Cause Damage by Failing to Take Sex Abuse Seriously video only on link

The sheriff of a small county in northeast North Carolina says he is "disgusted" by the parents of six men who are accused of sexually abusing their sister for nearly a decade, at a private family compound. "I blame the parents for this," Perquimans County Sheriff Eric Tilley told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "It's your responsibility as a parent to teach [your children] right and wrong. When you see a child doing something that is totally wrong and you don't correct them, then the child thinks it's OK." Tilley said his deputies charged the six brothers, ranging in age...

ALLEGATIONS that 220 child sailors at the navy’s West Australian training base were raped or brutalised, and that more than 70 young officer cadets at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra suffered sexual or other abuse, are so serious they will be tabled in federal ­parliament. So far, almost 500 former and serving Defence Force members have received reparation payments of up to $50,000 for damage caused by the abuse they suffered — a cost to Defence of more than $21 million. As well, 45 cases have been ­referred to state and territory police forces for possible prosecution. They...

The Vatican attempted to minimize its culpability over the Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal as a UN committee on torture grilled the institution over it alleged “climate of impunity” which has prevailed for decades. In a two-hour hearing in Geneva, the Committee Against Torture was unrelenting in its questioning of the Vatican delegation, asking about past policy decisions, the juridical distinction between the Holy See and Vatican City, and information on specific cases, Reuters reports. The Vatican, which is set to issue a formal answer on Tuesday, said the church has been cleaning house for the past decade and...

The mother of the alleged victim of a powerful Hollywood pedophile ring says she tried for years to interest the media in the story. Michael Egan’s mother Bonnie Mound said, “I wrote every news channel, every magazine, every talk-show host, everybody, from Oprah to ‘20/20’ to ‘60 Minutes’…. Nobody wanted to do anything because of the high-profile people involved.” One of those alleged “high-profile people” is defendant Bryan Singer, who is said to have “manipulated his power, wealth, and position in the entertainment industry to sexually abuse and exploit the underage Plaintiff [Michael Egan], “through the use of drugs, alcohol,...

Hollywood executives Garth Ancier, David Neuman and Gary Goddard have been accused of sexually abusing teenage boys in lawsuits filed Monday in Hawaii federal court. “I would not wish on my worst enemies what I went through,” declared plaintiff Michael Egan at a Monday news conference at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Ancier is the former president of BBC Worldwide America and also served as head of programming for Fox, NBC and the WB. He’s also the head of year-old Quad Media Partners, formed to launch four fully curated linear TV networks, “each built around a modern decade in...

EDITOR’S WARNING: This article contains graphic descriptions of this abortion practitioner’s crimes. Millionaire Oklahoma abortionist Nareshkumar Gandalal “Naresh” Patel, who once faced charges of raping and sodomizing his abortion patients, is once again under investigation after Operation Rescue filed a five-count complaint against him with the State Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma Health Department, and the Oklahoma Medical Board. nareshpatelThe complaints were based on documents and medical waste that had been discarded in a publicly-accessible trash receptacle near Patel’s Outpatient Services for Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City. The material was received by Operation Rescue from an anonymous source on...

Bob Jones University has fired an independent firm hired to investigate sex abuse reports just one month before the group planned to release its 13-month review findings. The university had contracted with Lynchburg, Va.-based GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) in November 2012. “Over the last several months, we grew concerned about how GRACE was pursuing our objectives, and on Jan. 27, 2014, BJU terminated its contract with GRACE,” the university said in a press release. “It is BJU’s intention to resolve its differences with GRACE, and we are disappointed a resolution could not be reached before...

Numerous studies have found that children who do not live with both biological parents, irrespective of socioeconomic status, are far more likely to be sexually abused than their peers in intact families. In particular, girls living in non-traditional families are found to have been sexually abused by their ‘stepfathers,’ either the married, cohabiting or casual partner of a divorced or single mother, at many times the rate girls are sexually abused by their natural fathers in intact families. (Snip) Child sexual abuse is not fully and frankly discussed because the public discourse is self-censored by politicians, academics, social service organisations,...

American pastor and missionary Thomas (Tom) Randall has been imprisoned in Manila, Philippines on allegations that an orphanage he and his wife founded in the country has been operating as a front for human trafficking and that dozens of poor children living at the facility had been suffering sexual abuse for years. Randall was on a mission trip in the country when state and social welfare authorities apprehended him and two workers on Jan. 12 at the Sankey Samaritan Orphanage in Lucena City, Philippines, reportedly on allegations that he had been negligent regarding alleged abuse and sex trafficking at the...

A former North Carolina minister who pleaded guilty in 2013 to sexually molesting underage Haitian girls received a 25-year sentence from a federal judge on Friday. Larry Michael Bollinger, 68, pleaded with a federal court judge for over an hour to prevent him receiving a maximum 120-year sentence, and admitted that he was a sex addict who for years had been obsessed with pornography, and had solicited sex from prostitutes, as well as frequented adult bookstores. Once he was in Haiti and the opportunity presented itself to sexually abuse the girls, Bollinger "crossed boundaries I never imagined I would have...

MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC-TV) - A Memphis COGIC pastor will plead guilty to a sexual battery charge and his church will shut down, according to his attorney. Michael Bryant, pastor at Hour of Restoration COGIC in Memphis, was in general sessions court Thursday for what was supposed to be a bond reduction hearing. Instead, defense attorney Art Horne says he and the prosecution worked out a plea agreement in a "criminal information" that will be brought before a judge in criminal court. "The case is settled," said Bryant's defense attorney, Art Horne. "He's pleading guilty to sexual battery by an...

The experience of the sexual abuse crisis, hopefully, will "help us become more humble, less arrogant and bossy in our ministry," Bishop Charles Scicluna told members of the Canon Law Society of America on Oct. 16 at their annual meeting in Sacramento, Calif. He described sexual abuse as "an egregious betrayal of sacred trust" that "has the power to stint the normal development of people" and "cause depression, post-traumatic disorders, loss of self-esteem and, most tragically, loss of faith." It "is an expression of the anti-Gospel, a betrayal of the message of compassion and love." Scicluna began working as the...

Former child and teen movie star Corey Feldman is pulling back the curtain on the horrific sexual abuse he and late friend Corey Haim endured at the hands of Hollywood pedophiles.

(Reuters) - The Roman Catholic archbishop of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Archdiocese said on Thursday that serious mistakes had been made in the archdiocese's investigations of allegations of sex abuse by clergy and he has ordered a review of all of its files by an outside firm. "To those who have been hurt, to the victims of clergy abuse and their family members, I can only tell you how sorry I am," Archbishop John Nienstedt said in the archdiocese's official publication. "I realize how damaging such actions are in violating the care of their human dignity." But David Clohessy, director of...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Archbishop John Nienstedt said he accepts responsibility for addressing the unfolding clergy sexual abuse crisis and regrets that a growing number of parishioners and priests in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis have "lost confidence" in him. However, he denied any abuse cover-up or illegal actions and repeated the archdiocese's claim that there are no offending priests in active ministry. Nienstedt's remarks came in an e-mailed response to questions from MPR News. It's the first time the archbishop has answered questions about the scandal since MPR News began publishing investigative reports in late September. "As...

The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota has found itself in the middle of the ongoing sex abuse crisis in Minnesota, according to Inside Higher Ed. While none of the allegations of abuse took place at the university, several clergy implicated in the scandal either were employed at the institution or served on its board. The Most Rev. Harry Flynn, the archbishop emeritus of the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese, recently resigned from the board amid allegations that he did not do enough to prevent the abuse. Flynn, according to the university, had served as board chair since 1995. The...

The House of Representatives just passed a bill aimed at keeping convicted sex offenders and violent felons from working in schools. As it heads to the Senate with bipartisan support, the teachers unions are now objecting. Megyn Kelly asked on her show tonight, “What is the real endgame by the unions? Because you can’t imagine that the unions want convicted rapists to be working next to their children in these schools. So what is the motivation?” Kyle Olson, from the Education Action Group Foundation, said the unions are out to protect adults, the members who pay their dues, and not...