Death penalty for sexual abuse of children:
MP chief minister promises to bring bill
Press Trust of India
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday said his government will bring a bill in the next session of the Assembly to provide death penalty for those guilty of sexual violence against children.
“We will bring this bill in the next session. After the Assembly passes it, it would be sent to the Centre,” Chouhan said.
The chief minister was speaking at a function here to welcome Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s `Safe Childhood - Safe India’ campaign, aimed at spreading awareness about child safety.
“We should be united in uprooting the deadly mentality which gives rise to sexual violence against children....It is very painful when we hear news of sexual assaults on kids as young as two years,” Chouhan said.
Satyarthi said that his tour, which started on September 11, will cover 11,000 kilometres and pass through 22 states before concluding, on October 16, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi.
Some 50 witnesses for Cardinal Pell sex abuse hearing
By AFP
Cardinal George Pell (R) arrives for a committal hearing relating to charges of historical sex abuse at the Melbourne Magistrates Court on October 6, 2017. A frail-looking Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell, a top advisor to Pope Francis, arrived for a second court appearance on October 6 as he fights sexual abuse charges that he strongly denies. He is accused of multiple historical sexual offences, meaning that the alleged crimes occurred long ago. / AFP PHOTO / Mal Fairclough
Around 50 witnesses could be called to a hearing in March to determine if there is enough evidence for Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell to stand trial on sex abuse charges, a court heard Friday.
The 76-year-old, a top adviser to Pope Francis, is accused of multiple historical sexual offences relating to incidents that allegedly occurred long ago.
He is the most senior Catholic cleric to be charged with criminal offences linked to the church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal.
The exact details and nature of the allegations against Pell have not been made public, other than they involve “multiple complainants”.
A frail-looking Pell returned to the Melbourne Magistrates Court Friday for a largely administrative matter in which March 5 was set for the start of a four-week committal hearing to decide if there is enough evidence from the prosecution for the case to go to trial.
Many of the details cannot be reported for legal reasons. But Magistrate Belinda Wallington said all witnesses would be allowed except five, meaning some 50 could be called up, including former choirboys.
“It is appropriate to allow people’s memories to be further explored,” she said.
His barrister Robert Richter suggested it was “impossible” that some alleged incidents occurred at a Melbourne cathedral. “We propose to demonstrate … that what was alleged was impossible,” he told Wallington.
Pell has not had to enter a plea yet, but at his first appearance at the same court in July he instructed his lawyer to make clear he intended to plead not guilty. “For the avoidance of doubt and because of the interest, I might indicate that Cardinal Pell pleads not guilty to all charges and will maintain the presumed innocence that he has,” Richter said at the time.
Pell, a former Sydney and Melbourne archbishop, was not required to attend the hearing Friday. But Australia’s most powerful Catholic again opted to appear, having previously vowed to defend himself and clear his name after a two-year investigation led to him being charged on June 29.
Leave of absence
At his first court appearance, he had to battle through a crush of national and international media as he walked the short distance from his barrister’s office to the court’s main entrance. Hunched over and looking weary, he again made the same slow trek to and from the court on Friday but with a much heavier police presence and less media, making no comment.
He did not react as several protesters called out abuse on his way in. He was also heckled with screams of “nowhere to hide” as he left. But he also had supporters, including Carmen Zahra who said: “We know that he is a man of integrity.”
Pell has been granted a leave of absence by the Pope, who has made clear the cardinal would not be forced to resign his post as head of the Vatican’s powerful economic ministry.
But the scandal has rocked the church.
Australia’s Catholic leaders have previously spoken out in support of him, describing Pell as a “thoroughly decent” man. Supporters have set up a fund to help him pay his court costs, according to the Institute of Public Affairs, a high-profile conservative Australian think tank.
The allegations coincide with the final stages of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse, ordered in 2012 after a decade of pressure to investigate widespread allegations of institutional paedophilia.
The commission has spoken to thousands of survivors and heard claims of child abuse involving churches, orphanages, sporting clubs, youth groups and schools.
Pell appeared before the commission three times, once in person and twice via video-link from Rome.
Pope Francis denounces porn, demands online protection for kids amid Vatican’s Windsor, Ont. child porn scandal
Pope Francis, shown during a weekly general audience at St Peter's square on Oct. 4, met with participants of a Catholic Church-backed international conference on fighting child pornography and protecting children in the digital age. (FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
By NICOLE WINFIELD The Associated Press
VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis on Friday denounced the proliferation of adult and child pornography on the internet and demanded better protections for children online — even as the Vatican confronts its own cross-border child porn investigation involving a top papal envoy.
Francis met with participants of a Catholic Church-backed international conference on fighting child pornography and protecting children in the digital age. He fully backed their proposals to toughen sanctions against those who abuse and exploit children online and improve technological filters to prevent young people from accessing porn online.
Francis said the Catholic Church knew well the “grave error” of trying to conceal the problem of sexual abuse — a reference to the church’s long history of having priests who rape and molest children and bishops who cover up for them. Several well-known cases have involved priests having child porn, or photographing their victims.
Francis said an international, cross-disciplinary approach was needed to protect children from the dark net and the “corruption of their minds and violence against their bodies.”
Using terms that are certainly new to papal lexicon, Francis denounced “extreme pornography” on the web that adults, and increasingly children consume, and the increasing use of “sexting” and “sextortion” among the estimated 800 million minors who navigate the internet.
“We would be seriously deluding ourselves were we to think that a society where an abnormal consumption of internet sex is rampant among adults could be capable of effectively protecting minors”
The conference was planned some two years ago, but it unfolded precisely at the time when the Vatican is facing back-to-back child sex scandals: One of Francis’ top advisers, Cardinal George Pell, recently took leave to face old abuse charges in his native Australia, while in August the Vatican recalled a senior diplomat from its embassy in Washington who got embroiled in a child porn investigation.
Windsor, Ontario police have issued an arrest warrant for Monsignor Carlo Capella, accusing him of accessing, possessing and distributing child pornography during a visit to a Windsor church over Christmas. He is now in the Vatican, where prosecutors have opened an investigation.
The Vatican in 2013 criminalized child porn possession, distribution and production, with sanctions varying from up to two years and a 10,000-euro fine ($11,170) to 12 years and a 250,000-euro fine.
Some U.S. church officials and critics balked at the recall, saying the Vatican should have waived diplomatic immunity and let Capella face charges in the U.S. or Canada. Vatican officials have defended the recall as consistent with common diplomatic practice and suggested that Capella will face a criminal trial in the Vatican if the evidence warrants it.
Participants at the congress offered sobering statistics about the problem: Last year, Interpol identified five child victims of online abuse every day, while the internet Watch Foundation identified more than 57,000 websites containing child sexual abuse images.
The conference, which drew leading researchers in public health, Interpol, the U.N., government representatives as well as executives from Facebook and Microsoft, issued a 13-point call to action that it presented to Francis on Friday. Their declaration demands that:
Lawmakers and governments improve laws to protect children online and punish perpetrators of child porn production
Technology companies develop better ways to block redistribution of porn and attack the proliferation of child porn images already on the web
Law enforcement agencies improve information sharing and ensure help for young victims of online exploitation
Health professionals enhance training to recognize signs of abuse and increase research into the effects of viewing porn on young minds
Faith leaders, governments and civil society to increase awareness about the problem.
Francis said he wanted each of them to remember that children look to adults, with light in their eyes and trust in their heart, to protect them. “What are we doing to make sure they are not robbed of this light, to ensure that those eyes will not be darkened and corrupted by what they will find on the internet?”
The Pontifical Gregorian University drew plaudits for hosting the conference and bringing together a remarkable spectrum of specialists to discuss a little-reported issue. Victims’ advocates and other groups nevertheless pointed to the church’s many cases of priests convicted of having child porn, and church authorities who covered up for them.
“It is astonishing that those problems were not only swept under the rug at this conference, but treated as qualifications for sponsoring the event,” said Terence McKiernan of BishopAccountability, an online resource of the abuse scandal.
The victims group SNAP concurred: “The Vatican should not be leading this summit. They should be the target of this summit.”
Winnipegger charged in international
child porn investigation
Winnipeg police were contacted by New Zealand police about child sexual abuse images being shared online
CBC News
A 25-year-old Winnipeg, Manitoba man has been charged in an international child pornography investigation.
Winnipeg police were contacted by their counterparts in New Zealand last month about images of child sexual abuse being shared in an online chat room.
The New Zealand Digital Child Exploitation Team said that between Sept. 25 and 26, several images of child sexual abuse were shared by from an IP address located in Winnipeg.
On Thursday, Winnipeg police searched a home in the East Elmwood area. A short time later, a man was arrested at a house in the city's Burrows area.
He has been charged with sexual assault, sexual interference, possession of child pornography and several counts of making child pornography available to others.
Forensic analysis on items seized by police is ongoing and more charges could be laid, police say.
Mundesley man caught with indecent images of children placed on sex offender’s register for 10 years
Christine Cunningham
A man found with indecent images of children on his phone has been given a 10 month suspended jail term and placed on the sex offender’s register for 10 years.
Richard Perren, 45, was found with the images on his phone when police searched his address in Mundesley, Norwich Crown Court was told.
Michael Crimp, prosecuting, said they found Perren had also been chatting to other users about child sex abuse and had distributed some of the indecent images. He also had one extreme porn image on his phone.
Perren of Willis Street, Norwich, admitted making indecent images of children, possessing an extreme porn image and distributing indecent images.
Jude Durr, for Perren, said he was full of remorse and had already sought help and counselling. He said Perren had become addicted to online gambling and this had morphed into him looking at indecent images of children.
Now that's a stretch! I've heard some pretty strange excuses for perversion before but this is the strangest.
Historic sex abuse charge guilty finding
Stephen John Landless
By Meggie Morris
A 58-year-old WA man who had his passport seized over historic child sex offences and was prevented from leaving Australia to get married in Thailand has been found guilty of one count of abuse.
Stephen John Landless, from Australind, was charged with eight counts of indecent treatment of a child under 14 but found guilty of only one in the Bunbury District Court today.
The offences were alleged to have occurred between 1983 and 1985 in Donnybrook and Bunbury against a girl who was 13 years old at the time.
He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, but admitted to having had inappropriate contact with the girl after her 14th birthday.
Last October, Mr Landless had his bid to fly to Thailand to get married rejected in the Bunbury Magistrate's Court after his passport was seized as part of his bail conditions.
Judge Audrey Gillian Braddock said she found Mr Landless's self-criticism and expression of regret sincere, and noted he had no convictions prior nor since.
"I accept that you were ashamed of yourself, as you should be," Judge Braddock said. "But I accept your remorse is genuine."
Judge Braddock admitted the sentence handed down to Mr Landless was unusual in the context of this type of crime, before she ordered him to pay a $10,000 fine.
He did not receive a jail sentence.
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