Posted on 02/10/2011 1:02:49 PM PST by topcat54
Monsignor William Lynn, former head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's Office for Clergy, has been charged for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abuse by priests, District Attorney Seth Williams announced today.
Two felony counts of endangering the welfare were lodged against Lynn follow a grand jury investigation, Williams said at a news conference.
Williams also announced the Revs. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, and Bernard Shero, 47, a former 6th grade teacher at St. Jerome's School in Northeast Philadelphia, had been charged with raping and sexually assaulting the same boy in the parish between 1998, when he was 10 years old, and 2000.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
If they are guilty castration would be too kind.
this when the church is launching a multi million dollar add campaign to bring people back to the church.
They should first get the clergy in order and expell, turn over to prosecutors all priests (and others) that were involved in any such scandals. They should do this for both the predators and the ones that shuffled them around.
Excommunicate and prosecute - that would bring people back to the church.
How about if the church focused on establishing an order to provide care for child victims who grew up unable to manage their own lives? Therapy and psychiatric medication and financial management and help with employment.
And try to identify and find those people.
Rather than only paying off the ones who can beat the church in court.
Most, if not all, dioceses in the United States have established programs administered by members of the laity to do that. I don’t know how successful a specific order would be in gaining the trust of the victims in order to provide them the help they need.
You're right - God will forgive them when He's ready. For people here to believe that's their job - and that it trumps Cesar's law is blasphemy... These men need to be judged by our legal system...
I don't expect the "media", (the gospel of Satan), to treat the perpetually detested Catholic Church fairly, but it is quite interesting to watch them take their axes to the Church and swing away like maniacal demons.
Death by hanging. (Death ... by Unga-Bunga!!!)
But let us suppose, hypothetically, that they are innocent; that their accusers are deliberately and willfully lying.
What should we, as a society, do with false accusers?
When taken to Court many of the priests were exhonerated. The vast majority of the payoffs were out of court settlements. Frankly, the Church doesn't know how to protect itself from this sort of thing, (false accusations and unfair media attacks). The Church is a big, easy target. As a Divinely instituted entity whose job it is to preach the gospel and forgiveness of all sins, and to save souls, it's really not much good at defending itself from the vultures. What the Church needs to do is rid itself of homosexual priests, (even the ones who have not been accused of anything). The media refers to these homos as "pedophiles"; even though nearly every single "victim" was a post pubescent BOY, many of them age 16 and 17.
The problem is the Church's acceptance of queers and allowing them to be priests with the false belief they will "behave themselves" and be "Christ-like" once ordained. But the fact is homos can't control their urges nearly as well as normal men. These very words in fact were written in an Apostolic letter by Pope John XXIII in 1961, directing to the bishops of the world to NOT allow homosexuals into the seminary.
I'm not a Catholic but I am a lawyer and I can't disagree with a thing you say here, especially the part about greedy lawyers pushing much of this. I know for a fact that is true. The statute of limitations on this type of csae should be two years after the plaintiff turns 18 or two years after the event takes place, which is later. NOT two years after "date of discovery". And concealment should not be able to be used to toll the deadline unless the victim was unconscious or otherwise unable to know the events were taking place.
Yes. When I was regular bar fly years ago I remember a conversation two had about setting up a priest. I told them it would not work. They asked why? I said well when I get on the witness stand. It will not happen. Just amazing what people will do on either side. True story.
Thank you ... interesting story, and unsurprising.
Do you have a link to this”it is now estimated that over 1/2 of all previous allegations of sexual abuse were bogus”.
by Thaddeus Baklinski - Thu Jan 13, 2011 16:03 EST
LOS ANGELES, January 13, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) -
LA attorney Donald H. Steier has filed a declaration with the Los Angeles County Superior Court stating that a large number of sex abuse claims against priests are false or heavily exaggerated, according to a report by TheMediaReport
(http://www.themediareport.com/jan2011/special-steier-declaration.htm)
In his declaration Mr. Steier states: “One retired F.B.I. agent who worked with me to investigate many claims in the Clergy Cases told me, in his opinion, about ONE-HALF of the claims made in the Clergy Cases were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse.” (emphasis is Mr. Steier’s)
“In several cases my investigation has provided objective information that could not be reconciled with the truthfulness of the subjective allegations. In other words, in many cases objective facts showed that accusations were false,” Mr. Steier writes.
Mr. Steier, who reports in the declaration that he has taken part in over 100 investigations involving claims of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in Los Angeles, says that many plaintiffs had come forward only after hearing about lucrative settlements from an abuse claim.
“I am aware of several plaintiffs who testified that they realized that they had been abused only after learning that some other person - sometimes a relative - had received a financial settlement from the Archdiocese or another Catholic institution,” Mr. Steier states.
He describes plaintiffs’ testimonies changing over time, resulting in increased settlement pay-outs.
“In my investigation of many cases, I have seen the stories of some accusers change significantly over time, sometimes altering years, locations, and what activity was alleged - in every case, the changes seemed to have enabled or enhanced claims against my clients, or drastically increased alleged damages,” the veteran attorney declares.
In addition, Mr. Steier claims that many priests under investigation willingly undertook, and passed, lie-detector tests, while their accusers refused the test.
“I have had accused priest clients take polygraph examinations performed by very experienced former law enforcement experts, including from L.A.P.D., the Sheriff Department, and F.B.I. In many cases the examinations showed my clients’ denial of wrongdoing was ‘truthful,’ and in those cases I offered in writing to the accuser to undergo a similar polygraph examination at my expense. In every case the accuser refused to have his veracity tested by that investigative tool, which is routinely used by intelligence agencies,” Mr. Steier reports.
Mr. Steier implicates the victims’ advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) for their part in making it a simple matter, by means of their website, for anyone wanting to make a false claim of clerical sexual abuse to find the information they need.
“They maintain an interactive Internet website with a user ‘Forum’ and ‘Message Board,’ among other features, where people can share detailed information between alleged victims pertaining to identity of specific alleged perpetrators, their alleged ‘modus operandi,’ and other details of alleged molestation,” Mr. Steier says.
“In effect, a person who wanted to make a false claim of sexual abuse by a priest could go to that website and find a ‘blueprint’ of factual allegations to make that would coincide with allegations made by other people. Law enforcement also uses the S.N.A.P. website to attempt to locate new victims and allegations against Catholic priests.”
In a press release, SNAP denounced Steier’s report as “among the most outrageous and hurtful ever made by a church defense lawyer,” and indicates it will file a California Bar Association complaint against him.
Images of Mr. Steier’s declaration, filed with the LA County Superior Court on December 15, 2010, are available through TheMediaReport website here.
Thanks tiggs.
Thanks jiminycricket000,I am going to do a little more research on this.
It makes Pierre the most intimately and intensely informed man in this whole debacle. I wouldn't say he is biased simply because he sees the scam for what it is, a SCAM. No one except those who take the time to follow this priestly abuse scandal ever get to find out how many priests never got a trial, their superiors chosing to pay the accusers off rather than have a News Room Entertainment Show blowing the scandal way out of proportion, and slandering the entire Catholic Church in the process. Few people know how many priests decided to fight and were acquitted in court. And fewer less know that a rather large segment of accused priests have long been dead, or were living in nursing homes with dementia. (many of the accusations went back to the 1960's and 70's). It's sort of difficult to defend one's honor when you're dead or unable to think, so I guess they're autmatically guilty too.
Other facts that the "news" never reports is that the VAST majority of the victims were males, post pubescent males from the ages of 12 - 17. This of course makes it a homosexual abuse story, not a "pedophile" story. Of course the "news" stations clearly understand that the word "pedophile" is far more detested than the word "homosexual", especially since the media itself have helped raise homosexuality up to the level of special civil rights. T'would be difficult to say a priest is "bad" because he had a "gay" relationship with a 15 year old boy, whilst their beloved Barney Frank is giving oral pleasure to his boy toy. Half the media are homosexual too, so the story had to be a "pedophilia" one; or put another way, a LIE.
There's no doubt that many of these homosexual deviate priests did what some accusers said they did, and there's also no doubt that the media and many of the "victims" lied through their teeth. The "victims" for the large sums of money, the media for the "glory" of throwing dirt on the Church. The liberal media perpetually lies through its teeth to bring down conservative politicians, conservative philosophy and conservative institutions, and the Catholic Church is one of their favorite whipping posts.
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