Free Republic

DURING 15 years of confinement in psychiatric institutions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Dimitri Gerasimenko was starved and repeatedly beaten. The indignities did not end with his death five years ago at the age of 30.Staff at the ramshackle asylum 50 miles from Bishkek, the capital, have never told his mother Raisa, 65, how he died. All her attempts to retrieve his remains have been met with prevarication, compounding her grief. “First I was asked for money if I wanted the body back,” she said. “Then I was told Dimitri had been sent to a medical academy. When...

NEW YORK, NY—After a long and fruitless search for a conservative host willing to subject herself to daily appearances on The View, producers have announced that in lieu of a conservative host, they will instead bring on an elephant piñata they can hit with sticks throughout the entire show. According to sources, the other hosts are elated at the change. "Republicans are Nazis!" said Joy Behar in the latest taping as she viciously struck the piñata with a long stick. "What do you think about that Mr. GOP Elephant? Oh, that's right—I forgot you can't talk. Because you're a dumb...

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume 'Prison Journal' touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances. When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility. Convicted in 2018, he would spend...

The House voted 220-208 on Thursday to pass the Protect Our Democracy Act, which addresses presidential abuses of power and reinforces the checks and balances between the branches of government. One Republican, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voted with all the Democrats for the bill. The bill now faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where 60 votes are required for passage. The bill, which has support from the White House, aims to strengthen guardrails that were tested by former President Donald Trump, including limitation on presidential pardons, the requirement for candidates for president and vice president to submit their...

BUTLER, Pennsylvania — A longtime nanny to Pennsylvania Republican Sean Parnell’s three children testified on Tuesday that she had never witnessed Parnell abuse his children, an allegation Parnell’s wife leveled against him last week as part of a bitter custody battle. Lori McGoogan said under oath during the final day of custody hearings at the Butler County Courthouse that she has provided child care for the children for about a decade — including in-home care starting about five years ago, overnight care, and completion of household tasks like laundry and dinner preparation — and that she never witnessed Parnell become...

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Exodus 20:5 KJV The legacy and shame of sexual sin has been passed down through my family, as is true in millions of others. I’m sure if the numbers of those affected were truly known, it would shock the world. This is the underbelly of a darkness that affects us to our core. And that which is left unexamined,...

One of government’s most shocking powers is civil asset forfeiture or seizure. This power occurs when law enforcement confiscates private property with or without charging the owner with a crime. In Tennessee, the betting odds say it is more likely personal property will be taken by law enforcement than through a robbery. Scary, isn't it? Going back slightly more than a decade you will find Tennessee law enforcement has taken more than $150 million in cash and personal property – without criminal charges or legal accusations of criminal activity. The proceeds from these types of seizures are generally applied to...

QAnon promoter David Trent has spent the last four years telling his tens of thousands of followers that the Democrats are pedophiles working as part of a global child sex trafficking ring run by the world’s elite. What he didn’t tell them was that he was the real pedophile: In 1999, he was found guilty of coercing an 8-year-old boy into sexual acts three years earlier, and spent almost five years in prison. Trent’s followers remained oblivious, because he was convicted under his real name, David Todeschini.

President Joe Biden told students at a school on Friday he would invite them to visit the White House if everyone got vaccinated. The president and First Lady Jill Biden visited Brookland Middle School in Washington, DC to highlight his masking and vaccination plans for school children.

DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-powerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago.

Jameria Hall was previously arrested for setting her mother's home on fire. Neighbors of a woman charged with killing her two young children told investigators they heard one of them screaming "Mommy no!" days before they were found dead last week in a Baltimore apartment, according to charging documents that also described the gruesome crime scene. The plea is believed to have come from Da’Neria Thomas, 6, on Aug. 19, five days before she and her 8-year-old brother, Davin, were found by a maintenance worker who entered the residence to look into complaints of a foul smell coming from the...

The tale of a sixteen-year-old who wants nothing more than to be a drag queen, the trailer for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie doesn’t hold back on drama or glitter. Audiences see young Jamie admitting his dream to himself, amongst the prejudice of his small, tight-knit community, and meeting his mentor in the form of Hugo Battersby, an enigmatic...

NEW YORK, N.Y. — A new civil sex-abuse lawsuit has been filed against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, also naming Opus Dei priest Father Michael Barrett, who is currently a pastor in the Archdiocese of New York. “My youth, my childhood was robbed from me,” said the plaintiff, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, in the case during the online press conference. He said he was “abused by two people involved in the Catholic Church, and this is Father Michael Barrett and Cardinal McCarrick, who wasn’t a cardinal then, and he should have never become one.”

A former Catholic bishop admitted that the Archdiocese of Albany covertly moved around priests accused of sexual misconduct before reintroducing them back into the ministry. Howard J. Hubbard, who headed the diocese from 1977 to 2014, said it was common practice in the 1970s and 1980s to temporarily remove accused priests, send them for supposed rehabilitation — then put them back on the job. Hubbard said that he regrets the “flawed” system.

A Catholic bishop is accused of sexually abusing a boy while serving as a priest on Long Island. Bishop Peter Anthony Libasci of Manchester New Hampshire Catholic Diocese is facing sexual abuse claims from nearly 40 years ago.

But as it was revealed that the FBI had at least a dozen informants heavily involved in the Watchmen — including that Iraq veteran — critics say the G-Men did as much to prod the plot as they did to prevent it from happening in the first place. “The FBI knew these people had some beliefs and were egging them on and providing help and ammunition,” Johnson said. “They encouraged, helped instigate and escalated the criminal conduct of those individuals. At the end of the day, there were almost as many FBI agents leading the group as the other people...

A married Texas pastor who claims he was only counseling a 15-year-old girl and her family is now in jail after police say he groomed her, gave her methamphetamines and then raped her multiple times in the last month, including at church. The teenager was hospitalized after her most recent encounter. Brian Pounds, 45, who was listed as the lead pastor at First Assembly of God in Vernon along with his wife, Amy, has been charged with sexual assault of a child and delivery of a controlled substance to a child, according to his redacted arrest warrant.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has received more than 100 reports of abuse by clergy and faith leaders across the state since announcing a statewide investigation in April, the law enforcement agency said Tuesday.The reports received by the agency to date include allegations of abuse and also relate to how churches and religious organizations responded to abuse, the justice department said. . . . Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat who is up for reelection next year, announced the investigation in April.

[Catholic Caucus] The Pachamama as a monstrance: Guadalajara, MexicoIf I had read in a dystopian novel about the Neo-Church that instead of a monstrance they would use a pagan image, I would have thought, 'This author is exaggerating! Who would ever think of or do such a thing?'July 1, 2021 (Stilum Curiae) – Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae, it is really true that truth is stranger than fiction. If I had read in a dystopian novel about the Neo-Church that instead of a monstrance they would use a pagan image, I would have thought, “This author is exaggerating!...

WARSAW, Poland — The Catholic Church in Poland announced Monday that it had received 368 allegations of clerical abuse in the past two and a half years. The claims relate to abuse reportedly committed by 292 priests and religious between 1958 and 2020. A report released June 28 by the Institute of Statistics of the Catholic Church said that the allegations were made between July 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020.