This Week's Catholic Pervs and Paedos List > Sex Abuse Probe in Spain's Catholic Church; The Philippines Refuse to Prosecute Paedo Priests; Virginia Priest Charged; Church Responsible for Paedo Priest; Priest in POCSO Court

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Spanish Catholic Church to conduct child sex abuse probe – media

19 Dec, 2021 18:53

FILE PHOTO Spanish priests prostrate to seek pardon for sex abuse in the Church at the cathedral

in Granada. November 23, 2014. © Reuters / Pepe Marin

After months of refusing to do so, Spain’s Catholic Church has reportedly launched an investigation into the alleged sexual abuse of hundreds of children by its clergy members going back some 80 years.

The investigation will examine allegations of abuse brought against 251 priests and an unspecified number of lay people from Church-run institutions, El Pais reported on Sunday. The newspaper uncovered the accusations during a three-year investigation.

The number of victims has been pegged at around 1,237, but the paper noted that this figure could rise into the thousands. The allegations cover some 31 religious orders and run across 31 of the country’s some 70 dioceses. The oldest incident is understood to date back to 1943, with the most recent case coming in 2018.

According to El Pais, the investigation will be carried out by the Spanish Episcopal Conference (SEC), a high-ranking body of the country’s bishops headed by Cardinal Juan Jose Omella, the archbishop of Barcelona.

Although it has not yet published its findings in full, the paper stated that the 385-page dossier about the issue was handed to Pope Francis when the pontiff was traveling to Rome after a visit to Cyprus earlier this month.

In a statement, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that the Pope had received the report and passed it on to “competent bodies so it could proceed according to current Church law.” Reuters noted that the documents could also be reviewed by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which investigates sexual abuse.

Earlier in the year, the SEC revealed that 220 cases of child sexual abuse had been officially reported to the Vatican over the past two decades. This included 76 allegations against priests and 144 against members of various religious orders, but did not account for accusations against lay members of the Church or employees working in the institutions run by the religious orders.

In recent months, victims’ rights groups have called for an independent probe similar to the high-profile investigation in France earlier this year that found members of the French Catholic Church had abused as many as 330,000 victims since 1950.

However, Spanish Church officials had thus far refused to do so, suggesting that child sexual abuse was a wider societal problem.

It is, but it doesn't excuse you from addressing the very large portion associated with the Catholic Church. The church will never be able to move on and get right with God as long as it continues to hide some of its horrendous sins.

Clerics get away with child abuse in the Philippines

Street dwellers including children queue for free food distributed by the Society of the Divine Word in Manila. The pandemic has brought an increase in the sexual abuse of children in the Philippines. (Photo: AFP)

Published: December 21, 2021 03:57 AM GMT

Father Shay Cullen

Preda Foundation

The era of fear and impunity is coming to a close in many countries, but not the Philippines

There are serious and profound changes taking place in the Catholic Church to acknowledge and prevent child sexual abuse by clerics and laypeople. The number of priests convicted in the Philippines is zero. Clerical child abuse has become a crisis for the Church as an institution.

We celebrate this December Pope Francis’ historic decree that approved a new law, Motu Proprio Vos estis lux mundi, to protect child victims and prosecute any clergy accused of child abuse. It covers bishops who cover up acts of abuse by priests or laypeople. Every complaint of child abuse must be reported and investigated immediately and reported to the Church and the civil authorities.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has guidelines for dealing with child abuse by priests but they are outdated and do not include any cooperation with civil authorities in bringing a cleric child rapist or abuser to justice. That changed in December 2019 when Pope Francis abolished pontifical secrecy and issued new decrees.

The Vatican pontifical law holds bishops and priests and major superiors responsible for failing to report crimes by priests or clerics against children to civil authorities. Pope Francis issued the decree stating that the cover-up of any acts of abuse against children and vulnerable people is a grave crime, especially if committed under threat or by abuse of authority.

In the Philippines, the arrest and detention of an American priest, Father Kenneth Hendricks, 78, in the Diocese of Naval, a town in Biliran province, on Dec. 5, 2018, for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of boys has focused attention on the culture of silence, cover-ups and inaction by local clergy, officials and townspeople. Now such cover-ups and failure to report child abuse to church authorities are a crime under church law. According to Philippine criminal law, one can be charged with aiding and abetting child abuse by allowing it to happen, as an accessory to the crime.

The alleged crimes by Hendricks were known in Naval but no one would take action, talk to the victims or try to stop the abuse for years. The alleged abuse was first reported to authorities in the United States who carried out a quiet investigation, gathered evidence and filed charges against Hendricks in Ohio where a judge issued an arrest warrant.

Remember that Jesus of Nazareth identified himself with children and said justice must be done by tying a millstone around the neck of the abuser and he be thrown into the sea

The fact that no local people dared accuse the priest despite widespread knowledge and complaints by several victims indicates the fear of retribution for going up against a priest. Even local prosecutors and judges in provincial towns like Naval are allegedly under pressure to find ways to freeze prosecutions and court proceedings indefinitely.

They hope the statute of limitations will finally prevail. This should be abolished. The Diocese of Naval apparently welcomes the freezing because as long as the case is there, Hendricks cannot be deported to the US to stand trial. That era of fear and impunity is coming to a close in many countries, but not yet in the Philippines despite the new church laws.

Pope Francis has also instructed that such crimes known to church authorities be reported to civil authorities and must not be withheld under the guise of “confidentiality” stipulated in canon law to protect the names of those involved.

This has been used in the past to stifle all action against pedophile priests and to protect them. Now it is a crime to do so. The instruction specifically states that church authorities must cooperate with civil authorities and share evidence with them in any investigation.

Also, the victims must never be bound to silence about the abusive act by anybody or impeded by anybody. So, the traditional out-of-court settlement is morally wrong and forbidden.

The child sex abuser committed a heinous crime and must be held accountable before the law. This is justice for the victims and a strong deterrent to other would-be child abusers. Remember that Jesus of Nazareth identified himself with children and said justice must be done by tying a millstone around the neck of the abuser and he be thrown into the sea.

So, the days of impunity in the Church are over, according to Pope Francis and the Vatican office protecting the rights of abused children. However, the culture of silence and abuse with impunity is still strong in the Philippine Church.

Many still think that it is a virtue to protect a priest accused by a child of abuse and they blame the child victim. The culture of fear and intimidation that follows when a child reports being abused is shocking.

What is needed in the Philippine Church to bring out the truth is an independent investigation like that done in France where thousands of victims were discovered. Now an investigation in Portugal is underway.

This cover-up and inaction make the Philippine Church a safe haven for pedophiles

and can attract them to become priests

The number of priests challenged in the Philippines for child abuse and investigated is only four or five and no priest has ever been convicted. In other countries, thousands have been brought to justice and the victims helped and compensated.

This cover-up and inaction make the Philippine Church a safe haven for pedophiles and can attract them to become priests. This instruction of Pope Francis is apparently not being respected and obeyed by bishops and church authorities.

There are many conservative bishops around the world resisting the reforms ushered in by Pope Francis and while they have pledged allegiance to the dogma of the infallibility of the pope, apparently they do not now believe in that dogma.

Most cases of child sexual abuse by clergy are rarely exposed. Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, now moved to Rome, said accusations against priests are investigated internally in the Church.

The vast majority of Philippine clergy are faithful and hard-working and are deeply ashamed of the terrible crimes against children that are being allowed to happen. They feel their priesthood is under a cloud by church inaction or silence against abusive clergy.

No priest has been known to have reported a fellow priest for child abuse that led to action to save the victim and bring the abuser to justice. They were afraid or ashamed to report a fellow priest and failed in their priestly and Christian duty to do justice and help the child victim.

That silence is a form of consent. Now dioceses have strict rules and regulations to report child abuse and prosecute the offender in civil courts. However, they allegedly ignore the Vatican law.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

Father Shay Cullen is an Irish Columban missionary who has worked in the Philippines since 1969. In 1974, he founded the Preda Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to protecting the rights of women and children and campaigning for freedom from sex slavery and human trafficking.

Retired Virginia priest charged with child sex abuse

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s attorney general says a retired priest who once oversaw children’s safety in a Catholic diocese in the Washington suburbs has been charged with sexually assaulting a child. 

The Washington Post reports that a Fairfax County grand jury indicted 68-year-old Terry Specht of Donegal, Pennsylvania, on two felony counts related to sexual abuse of a child under 13. 

According to the indictment, the assault took place in 2000, when Specht was chaplain and assistant principal at St. Paul VI Catholic High School. 

Public defender Dawn Butorac says Specht “maintains his innocence.” A diocese spokesperson says Specht was responsible for policy and instruction for the Arlington Diocese Office of Child Protection and Safety, but didn’t oversee abuse investigations. 

AP National News

Judge rules Catholic Church vicariously liable for Ballarat

paedophile priest Bryan Coffey's abuse 50 years ago

By Elizabeth Byrne

Posted Mon 27 Dec 2021 at 1:21pm

Ballarat priest Bryan Coffey, who died in 2013, sexually abused boys in the 1960s and 1970s.

(ABC Local Radio: Margaret Burin)

A man has successfully sued the Catholic Church after a court found it had vicarious liability for sexual abuse he says he suffered from a notorious priest 50 years ago. The Victorian man's lawyers believe it is the first such ruling in Australia.

Father Bryan Coffey was convicted in the Ballarat County Court in February 1999 of multiple counts of sexual assault against other children, and was given a three-year suspended sentence.

Did they also give him a gold watch? Why no prison time? It wouldn't seem that he was very sick or old as he lived another 14 years. Oh, well, it is likely his real sentence began in 2013.

He died in 2013.

The man told the Victorian Supreme Court that Coffey had sexually abused him at his parent's Port Fairy home on two occasions in 1971, when the assistant priest was visiting.

The victim was five years old at the time.

He claimed damages for pain and suffering, lost earnings, medical expenses, exemplary damages and aggravated damages, related to the priest's position in the community, and the fact that gave him access to his home to commit the offences.

The court heard the man's life had been difficult and he had problems at school, where he says a female teacher was physically abusive to him. Both of his parents were killed in an accident when he was a young man.

He said he had long suffered bouts of depression, which he attributed to the abuse.

Bryan Coffey's victims say they don't understand why they had to fight the church every step of the way, and money won't heal their trauma.

It won't pay for their sins, either.

However, Justice John Forrest found his explanation unconvincing. He pointed to the man's earlier attempt to seek redress from the church over his claim about his former female teacher.

"It is extraordinary that, in the process of making the school abuse complaint to a Catholic redress body — with the help of two firms of solicitors — that [the man] did not mention Coffey's actions," Justice Forrest said.

The man had also not told his psychologists over many years.

But Justice Forrest found that, despite the flaws in the man's account, the abuse did happen, on the balance of probabilities. He found the abuse was consistent with what Coffey's other victims had experienced.

A critical part of the case concerned how the legal action began. The man had made little mention of the incident until he saw an advertisement in a local paper from some Canberra lawyers.

Justice Forrest refused to award damages up until that time, but said he accepted the man had suffered since the memories were reawakened.

"I am satisfied that, once he read the December advertisement, the memories of the Coffey assaults were revived and have since that time played, along with his other issues, a part in the production of his depression and anxiety," the judge said.

Justice Forrest awarded the man $200,000 in damages for pain and suffering. But the more significant finding was that the church was liable for aggravated damages, after Coffey's action.

"I can see no reason why the diocese should not be vicariously liable for such an award given that is relates directly to Coffey's conduct and is compensatory in nature," Justice Forrest said.

Lawyer Sangeeta Sharmin, who works for Ken Cush & Associates in Canberra, said the decision was significant. "It marks for the first time in Australia a decision that exercises attribution of liability to a bishop for the acts of his predatory priest or assistant priest," Ms Sharmin said.

"Bishops and church leaders can no longer avoid responsibility by using a technical argument that the abuse did not arise from confidence in the clerical collar."

The court awarded the man an additional $20,000 for aggravated damages and a further $10,000 for future medical costs.

Mumbai – POCSO Court announces Life sentence to

Catholic Pastor for sodomizing a 13 years old boy

By Manish Sharma

December 30, 2021

 

The church is one of the largest sources of sexual abuse and child abuse, and that has been proved with millions of such cases across the world. The expediency with which the church has sought to sustain the church’s divine status in the eyes of its believers at the expense of a massive cover-up of sexual abuse by its clergy is mind-boggling.

Here, I must interject to note the definition of the word "church". There is the Catholic Church, which still considers itself as God's church, even after the thousands of paedophile priests, Bishops and Cardinals have been outed. 

The real "church" is made up of those people who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour - regardless of church affiliation. This does not include paedo priests, Bishops, or Cardinals, or anyone else who enables those evil men to continue in their Satanic work of destroying innocence and violating the sacred.

You greatly dishonour real Christians when you include Catholics under the label "church". Yes, of course there are good Catholic Christians, but, unfortunately, too few of them.

If any such case comes into the picture, the entire Church and Missionaries ecosystem kicks in to cover it up. They never shy away from demeaning the victims and their families. We have seen another such incident in Mumbai, where a pastor Father Lawrence sodomized a 13-years old boy in 2015.

Finally, the POCSO court has ordered the life sentence awarded to Father Lawrence for his heinous crime. The 13-year-old faced multiple assaults inside the Christ the King Church, Shivaji Nagar, Govandi, on November 27, 2015, that left him bruised and bleeding. He is now 18 years old and is still undergoing treatment for bodily ailments apart from suffering hallucinations and nightmares.

The boy’s mother hailed this decision and said that “Jesus had answered her prayer at Christmas”. “The court has pronounced Fr Lawrence guilty today. But I held him guilty on the very day of the assault. My faith in the men that run the Church is broken but my faith in Jesus is unshakeable.”

His mother said, “Supporters of Father Lawrence even held a morcha (march?) against us while we were inside the police station premises. They claimed we were filing a false case to extort money from the Church.

Unfortunately, too many pseudo-Christians worship their priest, pastor, Bishop, etc., rather than Jesus Christ, otherwise, they might know the truth.

They made it impossible for us to continue living in Shivaji Nagar by their taunts and criticism. We repeatedly shift residence from Govandi to Santacruz and the Chembur. Even now when I visit to seek documents from the church, they surround us with abuse.”

The family accused the Catholic Church hierarchy of abandoning them in their struggle for justice. The boy’s mother squarely blamed the Archbishop of Bombay, for “harassing the victim while harboring the accused priest”. Here it is important to know that Father Lawrence was arrested from Archbishop House.

The family also stated that the Archdiocese gave any help towards medical costs or legal aid, let alone moral support, as it claimed to this newspaper in 2015. “It is a blatant lie. The only person who stood by us was Brother Joe of SSVP,”.

This verdict is likely the first conviction of a Catholic priest in a POCSO case under the Bombay Archdiocese. We hope either the Vatican or Archdiocese of Bombay should defrock Fr Lawrence with immediate effect.

However this seems slightly difficult, as neither the local Church nor the Vatican takes any action against such Pastors, and this has become a trend. Church and Missionaries are gradually turning into places where such acts are performed without any shame, and they use their ecosystem to cover such acts and blame the victims.

There is a Higher Court whenever earthly courts and Popes fail to protect women and children.

Approaching Sodom > Swiss Can Change Gender and Name on a Whim; Cancel Culture Backfires; Official Resigns Over Trans Swimmer

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European country makes gender change easy

Switzerland is set to allow people to self-declare their gender identity

with only a visit to the civil registry office

A poster at Vogay, an association for sexual and gender diversity, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

June 1, 2020. © Reuters /Denis Balibouse

From Saturday, people as young as 16 can legally change both their gender and name in Switzerland without needing to undergo hormone therapy or medical evaluations as the country brings in new rules to remove bureaucratic hurdles.

According to the changes to the Swiss civil code, people who are not under legal guardianship will be able to choose their gender and legal name by self-declaration at the civil registry office. Applicants under 16 years and those under adult protection will need the consent of their guardian.

The move marks a departure from the current system of following regionally prescribed standards in Switzerland, which usually made it a requirement for applicants to submit a certificate from a medical professional that attests to their transgender identity.

Some cantons – which are semi-autonomous member states in the country’s federal system – also require people to go through hormone treatment or anatomical transition before applying to legally change their gender. Meanwhile, a name change request needed to be accompanied by proof that the new name has already been unofficially in use for several years.

In October, the Swiss Federal Council – Switzerland’s government – had stamped its approval on the rule change. The Swiss parliament had adopted the amendment to the Swiss Civil Code and the amendment to the Civil Status Ordinance last December.

However, the new rules do not introduce a third gender option in Switzerland and will not affect family law relationships, such as marriage, registered partnerships, and parentage. The federal government is examining two parliamentary motions that seek to introduce a third gender and eliminate gender entries altogether.

Swiss law currently only recognizes the male and female genders and requires that a child’s gender be entered into the civil registry at birth. The Swiss Federal Civil Registry Office also bars parents from leaving their child’s gender entry open even if it cannot be clearly determined at birth.

With the new rules, Switzerland joins some two dozen countries worldwide aiming to give legal weight to gender self-identification without requiring medical procedures. Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, and Norway are the other European countries that have done so already.

Some other European nations, including Denmark, France, and Greece, have also done away with the need for medical procedures such as sex reassignment surgery, sterilization, or psychiatric evaluation. But there are additional conditions.

Unlike Sweden, I have always considered Switzerland to be an eminently sensible country, until now.

How the ‘Cancel Culture’ Mob’s Attempt to Silence

Jordan Peterson Backfired

Rex Murphy

 December 14, 2021

Cancel culture is a misnomer for the ages. If it is anything, it is first surely not a culture, but its very opposite and antithesis. An anti-culture, or a movement to suffocate and injure real culture.

Like many other pernicious practices, it comes out of the horrid womb of woke politics. Its mode of operation is simple and, alas, well known. When it was a mere toddler its operations were localized. Mainly it was kept behind the ivy-darkened walls of the modern university, nursed by all the laboured and ersatz “disciplines” of the various and hollow studies departments. It emerged from the fallow field of identity politics and found ready home in all the morbid “isms” of our time, and the shower of every multiplying “phobias.” I won’t list them. You know what they are, but all orbit around Planet Politically Correct, and all are empty.

The earliest demonstrations of the anti-intellectual cancel culture phenomenon usually revolved around bands of precious students ganging up to stop some speaker coming to a campus, under the ludicrous accusation that the particular speaker would “create an unsafe space.” That he or she would threaten to destabilize the hyper-ripe sensibilities of the various “marginalized” groups, force their “erasure” and buttress “hegemonic discourse and cis-heteronormative privilege,” this latter a piece of arcana known only to those who write and say such things. I have yet to meet a “cis-het” and it causes me no grief I have not.

It should be obvious that being a student at Yale or Harvard or Oxford, or others of near equal prestige, is to be among the most “privileged” and “entitled” young people in the world. The condemned speaker’s very presence on a campus was always characterized as threatening “harm,” or would make some “feel” uncomfortable or “trigger” traumas, or even expose “vulnerable students” to violence.

These claims might be appropriate for a threatened invasion, or some gang-swarm on a campus. But to haul them out as reasons to cancel a 20-minute talk from some mild (almost always) small-C conservative writer or commentator is pure garbage. To any adult such claims were screamingly obvious fictions, or if they were not fictions they were something even worse—willingly induced delusions. Mainly, however, cancellations and protests were just hard-left politics, an unsubtle and harsh reach to limit basic free speech, to muzzle any opinion their campus petty dictators didn’t wish aired, and more than a gesture to bring universities and their professors, by confected scandal and demonstrations, to the hard left’s grim and one-dimensional way of thinking.

Cancel culture has had an infection velocity any malign virus would envy. It has long since left the academy, found a great fortress within Twitter and online, and now patrols or attempts to patrol newspapers, television shows, Hollywood (which has supinely taken a knee to all its vacuous obsessions), and received warm welcome among corporations, Facebook, much of the professions, and even on a person-to-person level.

I’d like to do a full exposition of its imperial reach in this timid and regressive age, but instead I want to do a recount of one of its earlier and most famous episodes.

The Pronoun Wars

Once upon a time and in a place very near (from where I am bruising the laptop keyboard) in a province called Ontario and its oh-so-proudly tolerant and diverse city called Toronto, on the campus of its celebrated and eponymous University, there was a professor, a clinical psychologist. And his name was Jordan Peterson.

It was at the beginning of what history now calls the Pronoun Wars, denoted by one sage observer, and the greatest nightmare grammarians have ever endured, and sparked by the emergence of the “trans” movement. A concentrated account must suffice. Dr. Peterson, a near anonymous figure in those days, objected to the idea that he could be mandated to use any of the glittering array of new-fangled (and frankly ridiculous) bedspread of invented pronouns. It wasn’t that he would not, in some person-to-person contact, agree to use a new “pronoun” to a student who requested it. His objection came from deeper sources: that the concepts behind the practice emerged from a mode of politics he regarded as pernicious. He emphatically declared that as either professor or citizen he would never submit to “compelled speech.”

Skipping over much, a band of fevered students charged him with “transphobia”—not incidentally yet another term that has leaped into news and academic discourse, though you will not hear it much, even now, outside these progressive vaults. They interrupted Dr. Peterson’s lectures, assailed him with contempt and insult, harassed him when he attempted to argue his case, brought noise machines to drown him out, and asked—demanded—he be fired.

Now I must make a great jump, but as his story is well-known to many I think it permissible to do so.

The attempts to silence and ostracize Dr. Peterson failed in a divinely spectacular fashion. The woke, identity-politics mob—I’m going vernacular here—got its politically correct fat ass bitten as with the teeth of a monster crocodile. He ascended into fame with supersonic speed, wrote the book “12 Rules for Life” that sold millions, and became the most famous academic in the world—a heralded icon to masses of people grateful for his advice, his multitude of Biblical and other lectures, and his articulated defiance of the bullying tactics and ideology of left dogma.

They tried to smother Peterson, and even his own University of Toronto was complicit in the early effort. But to their woe and heartburn resentment, unwittingly fed him Grade A oxygen and launched him to undreamt of fame and access to a worldwide audience. They had attempted to crush a sparrow and lo, they set a dragon in flight against themselves.

Just over a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Peterson had something of a triumphal return to the United Kingdom, to the singularly prestigious universities of Cambridge and Oxford, where he gave lectures to crowded halls, spoke of their famous unions, and met and conversed with some of the world’s premier thinkers. And, most particularly the visit to Cambridge University was a conscious upending of his previous time there. He had been invited to stay awhile with the Divinity Department. Shamefully, like in Toronto previously, there was a demonstration, the usual dull, dumb, dastardly charges that he would make the students “unsafe” that he was toxic etc., etc., boringly etc.

On that occasion the university caved. Cancel culture made its inglorious demands and they caved.

But now here, three years after his campaign against woke culture in general and cancel culture in particular, awakened, or rather reawakened Cambridge to its academic conscience. It repented, its professors returned to the dignity of their calling and reinvited the noble Prof. Jordan Peterson, not least for leadership as a main campaigner for intellectual integrity, free speech, and his great labours as a winged dragon warring against the censors and bullies of political correctness and all the ilk thereof.

He returned in triumph to the very university that earlier feared to host him.

You may have read about his two-week tour of Cambridge and Oxford in American and UK newspapers, heard or seen news of it on various television programs in both countries. Curiously, two weeks of a Toronto professor, world-class speaker, million-seller author, given great welcome by two of the world’s highest and most historic academies, hardly stirred if it stirred at all the newsrooms of the city he calls home. Toronto is a very big city and a very small place.

Its currently most famous citizen and pre-eminent intellectual is celebrated almost everywhere but in the city of his home.

“A prophet is not…” You know the rest.

USA Swimming Official Resigns in Protest to Trans Athlete

Lia Thomas Competing Against Women

December 28, 2021

A longtime official for USA Swimming has stepped down and is urging other officials to do the same, arguing that despite Thomas’s preciousness to God, the athlete enjoys an unfair advantage over female competitors.

Thomas has made headlines recently after breaking a series of records at a college swimming meet, swimming for the UPenn women’s team and competing against female athletes.

Thomas, who transitioned last year, competed for three years on the men’s team. The athlete has undergone hormone suppression and is in compliance with NCAA bylaws, as Just the News reported.

“If Lia came on my deck as a referee, I would pull the coach aside and say, ‘Lia can swim, but Lia can swim exhibition or a time trial. Lia cannot compete against those women because that’s not fair,’” USA Swimming referee Cynthia Millen wrote in her resignation letter, which was published by Swimming World magazine.

“I told my fellow officials that I can no longer participate in a sport which allows biological men to compete against women,” she explained. “Everything fair about swimming is being destroyed.”

Swimming World’s editor-in-chief John Lohn has also previously penned a column calling for Thomas to be excluded from NCAA championships, citing an unfair competitive advantage.

For opponents of Thomas’ ability to compete against women, they argue that this is about fair competition and not bigotry against the athlete and their gender identity.

In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, Millen explained that she has anything but animosity for Thomas, but views the situation from a purely physical standpoint.

“I don’t mean to be critical of Lia — whatever’s going on, Lia’s a child of God, a precious person — but bodies swim against bodies,” she explained. “That’s a male body swimming against females. And that male body can never change. That male body will always be a male body.”

Perverted Lives of the Rich and Famous > Ghislaine Maxwell Found Guilty

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Ghislaine Maxwell found guilty of helping Jeffrey Epstein

sexually abuse girls

By Luc Cohen  Reuters

Posted December 29, 2021 2:34 pm

Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty by a U.S. jury on Wednesday of helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls, sealing a remarkable fall from grace for the British socialite.

Maxwell, 60, was accused of recruiting and grooming four teenagers for Epstein between 1994 and 2004. Her former boyfriend Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex abuse charges of his own.

Actually, there's no way he killed himself. 

She was convicted on five of six counts. After the verdict was read, Maxwell pulled down her face mask and poured herself a glass of water.

The jury deliberated for five full days before reaching the verdict.

Along with the trials of movie producer Harvey Weinstein and singer R. Kelly, Maxwell’s case is among the highest-profile trials to take place in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which encouraged women to speak out about sexual abuse by famous and powerful people.

During the trial’s closing arguments in federal court in Manhattan a prosecutor said Maxwell was Epstein’s “partner in crime.”

“Ghislaine Maxwell made her own choices. She committed crimes hand in hand with Jeffrey Epstein. She was a grown woman who knew exactly what she was doing,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe said.

Maxwell’s attorneys argued she was being used as a scapegoat for Epstein and sought to portray the accounts of her four accusers as not credible, saying their memories had been corrupted over the decades and that they were motivated by money.

“Epstein’s death left a gaping hole in the pursuit of justice for many of these women,” Maxwell’s defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said. “She’s filling that hole, and filling that empty chair.”

Maxwell dated Epstein for several years in the 1990s, when the pair attended high society parties and traveled on luxurious private jets.

A few months after Epstein’s death, Maxwell purchased a home for $1 million in cash in Bradford, New Hampshire where she remained out of the limelight until her July 2020 arrest. An FBI official said Maxwell had “slithered away.”

Daughter of British press baron Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell had been accustomed to opulence all her life.

Her father founded a publishing house and owned tabloids including the Daily Mirror. He was found dead off his yacht near the Canary Islands in 1991.

GRAPHIC TESTIMONY

During the trial, jurors heard emotional and graphic testimony from four women, two of whom said they were 14 when Epstein began abusing them. Three of the women said Maxwell herself had inappropriately touched them.

The jury requested transcripts of the four women’s testimony during their deliberations, suggesting the jurors discussed the women’s accounts before reaching the verdict.

A woman known by the pseudonym Jane testified that she was 14 when Epstein first abused her in 1994.

Maxwell sometimes took part in her sexual encounters with Epstein and acted as if it was normal, Jane testified.

“It made me feel confused because that did not feel normal to me,” Jane said. “I’d never seen anything like this or felt anything like this.”

Moe said during her closing argument that Maxwell’s presence made young girls feel comfortable with Epstein. Otherwise, receiving an invitation to spend time with a middle-aged man would have seemed “creepy” and “set off alarm bells,” Moe said.

“Epstein could not have done this alone,” she said.

Moe reminded jurors of bank records they saw at trial showing that Epstein paid Maxwell millions of dollars over the years. She said Maxwell was motivated to do whatever it took to keep Epstein happy in order to maintain her luxurious lifestyle.

Defense attorney Laura Menninger countered during closing arguments that Maxwell was an “innocent woman” and that prosecutors had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Maxwell was aware of or involved in any crimes Epstein committed.

“They certainly proved to you that Epstein had abused his money and his power,” Menninger said. “That has nothing to do with Ghislaine, and everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”

Maxwell’s lawyers aggressively pushed back on the accusers’ accounts during the trial, arguing that their stories had shifted over the years.

Under cross-examination by Menninger, Jane acknowledged that she did not initially tell the FBI everything about Maxwell’s involvement because she was not comfortable sharing all the details.

“I was sitting in a room full of strangers and telling them the most shameful, deepest secrets that I’d been carrying around with me my whole life,” she said.

Maxwell’s defense said the women were motivated by money to implicate Maxwell since all four had received million-dollar awards from a compensation fund for Epstein’s victims.

“The money brought the accusers to the FBI,” Menninger said, saying the women were accompanied by personal injury lawyers to interviews with law enforcement agents. “Memories have been manipulated in aid of the money.”

But the women disputed those characterizations, saying they decided to testify out of a desire for justice, not money.

“Money will not ever fix what that woman has done to me,” testified one woman, known by her first name Carolyn.

This Week's Global Pervs and Paedos List > UK Paedo Reveller; Fake Gyno Examines Women Online; Revenge Porn Up 300%; Nearly 2000 CSAM Crimes in Stafs; Tusla Determined to Remain in 20th Century With CSA

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Predatory paedophile 'revelled' in exploiting children online

during Skype live streams

A predatory paedophile 'revelled' in exploiting young girls online during live streams on Skype.

John Heaney, 41, had more than 100 sexualised chats with children for his own perverted pleasure.

Police traced two of his victims, who were aged 13 and 14, while Heaney also had vile conversations with two other users who told him they were girls aged 14 and 15.

Heaney's years' of sick behaviour was uncovered after he was snared by an undercover police officer posing as a child online.

During one chat, Heaney, from Hulme, asked his victim to tell him how old she was. "Say it... say I'm only 15 years old," he said.

"He clearly revelled in their ages," a judge said before jailing Heaney for eight years.

Heaney committed his crimes while he was in a 'toxic relationship' where he was the victim of 'controlling behaviour', his barrister said.

"He was in a very dark place, and he sought intimacy online in ways that plainly he shouldn't," Simon Gurney said. "He saw it as fantasy and was able to justify it in that way."

But Judge Darren Preston, describing Heaney as a 'persistent, predatory paedophile', said: "These crimes are not, as you seemed to think at the time, victimless. They are not equals, they are children.

"They ought to be protected from the likes of adults like you who will exploit them. It is highly likely some if not all of these girls will have great difficulty in forming normal future relationships."

Manchester Crown Court heard the crimes occurred over a five year period, from 2014 to 2019.

Mr Gurney said crimes were not committed continuously, but that Heaney offended after his partner moved out and he became 'depressed', before stopping when they reconciled and starting again when further problems developed.

Heaney would have live video calls and conversations on Skype, where he made perverted sexual requests for his own gratification.

He continued to exploit a vulnerable 13-year-old girl, even after she'd told her she was 'lonely' and had become distanced from her friends.

Heaney's perverted online world came crashing down after he unwittingly began speaking online with who he believed to be a 12-year-old girl. It was actually an undercover officer targeting paedophiles online.

Heaney asked for a 'couple of photos', and after being told 'she' was in a lesson, he said: "Sneak one in before lesson! I’d love that."

After the officer sent Heaney a picture of what appeared to be a girl in a school uniform, he replied saying 'you do not look 12' and 'dangerous'.

Heaney asked for more pictures of the 'girl', and the officer replied challenging him about a 'lack of his own pictures'.

"I really shouldn’t be sending photos to a 12 year old!", he replied.

He was arrested in February last year and denied having any sexual interest in children, a claim which the judge described as being 'preposterous'.

It wouldn't surprise me that much if he was right. There's a good chance his interest was moral rather than sexual. Talking an innocent child into doing that which is not innocent might be the main attraction for him. Nevertheless, he deserves more than 8 years in prison.

Fake gynecologist tricked women into online vaginal examinations

18 Dec, 2021 13:55

© andresr / Getty Images

Italian investigators are dealing with a case of sexual abuse in which a man posed as a gynecologist to get a close look at the genitals of dozens of women. The suspect arranged examinations online.

The man contacted the women, telling them he was aware of the results of their intimate medical tests. Having obtained the victims’ personal data from websites, the 40-year-old suspect told the women they had been diagnosed with severe vaginal infections, requiring further check-ups, Italian prosecutors believe. 

With the knowledge of such personal data as his victims’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, and medical histories, the fake gynecologist tricked patients into online consultations. He requested video calls through platforms including Zoom, asking victims to show him their private parts to confirm the diagnosis, local media reported this week. 

Over 400 women across Italy have been targeted.

While some deceived women underwent online examinations by the fake doctor, others got suspicious and filed complaints with local police. One of the women, apparently targeted by the man in question, shared her experience in a post on social media, which resulted in commenters describing similar experiences, according to media reports. 

This week, the prosecutor’s office instructed police to search the suspect’s house. Smartphones and memory cards were seized, Italian media reported, adding that the investigation into the case classified as sexual violence is ongoing. Reports added that the story “has similarities” to a case of the “Bari gynecologist,” who has been under house arrest since late November, accused of sexual violence against at least two patients.

Revenge porn up over 300% in London

The number of revenge porn incidents in London reported to the Metropolitan Police

has increased sharply since December 2020, figures released by law enforcement show.

© Pexels / Cottonbro

The total number of revenge porn complaints in London “had risen by 698 between October 1, 2020 and October 31, 2021,” the Daily Mail reported, citing information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. The surge constitutes a “329% increase over a 13-month period,” the tabloid said.

Women remain disproportionately more targeted in alleged revenge porn cases, with “a total of 572 cases when compared to the 177 reports last year.” The number of cases in which the alleged victim is between 10 and 17 has quadrupled compared to last year, The Mail said.

Experts helping victims of revenge porn told the newspaper that the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic may have been a major factor driving this kind of crime up. There is no sign of it going down anytime soon, they said.

Revenge porn – publication of intimate pictures of a victim without their consent with intent to cause distress – was outlawed in England and Wales as a specific crime in 2015 and is punishable by up to two years in prison. This year, threats to share revenge porn were criminalized too under the Domestic Abuse Act.

14 perverts caught with child abuse images as 1,938 crimes

recorded in five years in Staffordshire

Cases include a vigilante paedophile hunter who downloaded 1,700 child abuse images

and a Royal Stoke doctor who viewed images of children being sexually abused

stokesentinel

Nearly 2,000 child abuse image crimes have been recorded in Staffordshire over the last five years, according to figures released by the NSPCC.

On average, there were 388 recorded offences in the county each year, meaning there was more than one every day.

Those, of course, are only the ones that were caught.

The population of Staffordshire is under 900,000. 

We take another look at some of the individuals who were brought before the court on charges relating to child abuse images.

Here are fourteen people who faced charges relating to the disgusting crime over that period.

Please go to Stoke on Trent Live for the rest of this story.

Budget further delays Tusla and Gardaí electronically sharing

child sex abuse disclosures

The establishment of a joint computerised notification system between Tusla and An Garda Síochána (AGS) was a key recommendation of the Garda Inspectorate’s ‘Responding to Child Sexual Abuse’ Review, published in December 2017.

MON, 27 DEC, 2021 - 17:48

CORMAC O’KEEFFE, SECURITY CORRESPONDENT

The electronic sharing of child sexual abuse disclosures between social services and gardaí has been delayed again – five years after it was initially recommended by the Garda Inspectorate.

The current system between Tusla and An Garda Síochána is still paper-based with concerns over delays, legibility of forms, lack of detail, communication problems and cases falling through the cracks.

The latest assessment said that it will “take some time and resources” to implement the technical solution because of the limited budget provided to the Gardaí and other technological priorities in the organisation. The continuing delay has sparked the concern of both the Policing Authority and the ISPCC.

One wonders what technical priorities are more important than saving children from child sexual abuse? It seems like Tusla is determined to stay in the 20th century when dealing with child sexual abuse.

The establishment of a joint computerised notification system between Tusla and An Garda Síochána (AGS) was a key recommendation of the Garda Inspectorate’s ‘Responding to Child Sexual Abuse’ Review, published in December 2017.

The Inspectorate expressed serious concern at the continuing reliance on posted letters, and problems with follow-on phone calls, between social workers and gardaí.

The 2017 review was an update on the Inspectorate’s initial inspection report of 2012. A Government implementation group set up in February 2018 published its first report in January 2019.

But no progress reports have been published since, although draft second and third reports have been discussed with the Authority. The Inspectorate has examined implementation of its 2012 report, but, in 2018, the then justice minister asked the Authority to monitor implementation of the 2017 review.

The 2017 review recommended that gardaí in conjunction with Tusla develop a new “joint approach for assessing and managing child protection/welfare notifications”. To achieve this, it urged the development of a “joint single electronic notification and tracking system”.

In a statement to the Irish Examiner, the Authority said the matter was discussed at an internal committee meeting: “While a notification system is currently in place, it is manual. The Committee were informed that the necessary IT system that will support electronic notifications between Tusla and the Garda Siochana will take some time and resources to implement, but that at present there was no clear timeline for implementation given the resource constraints and wider project prioritisation in respect of Garda ICT.” 

ISPCC Senior Policy and Public Affairs Manager Fiona Jennings said: “This recommended new system was to bring better structure that would ultimately allow for timely and speedy action where joint decisions have to be made for the protection of a child.

“At a time where the use of electronic technology is commonplace in so many facets of life, it is concerning to hear that this recommendation which has been accepted is not as progressed as it could possibly be and there doesn’t seem to be any plans to address it in 2022 either.” 

Ms Jennings said children “need both arms of the state working together effectively and efficiently”. Garda HQ said the objective of the agreed IT system was to have a “robust system which ensured all notifications were immediately visible to both agencies”.

It said the Authority has been informed it “will not be implemented for some time”. One major reason, it said, was Covid-19, with the bulk of the Garda IT system geared towards responding to that. This has meant there was “no capacity” to take on another sizeable IT project.

In addition, there was the impact of the HSE cyberattack on Tusla IT systems. Thirdly, Tusla was now concentrating on rolling out a new IT structure (NCCIS).

A statement from Tusla said it has met the Authority and was happy to contribute “to the overall reform of policing” as it applies to it.

It added: “Tusla and AGS continue to share all notifications in respect of suspected child abuse as per Children First legislation and both agencies continue to work in line with the existing Joint Working Protocol.”

Approaching Sodom > UNHRC Interfering in Internal Affairs; USAF and Gender Pronouns; Ex-Cop Wins Right to Criticize Xgenders; Governor Out to Destroy Families

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UN Human Rights Office to Litigate LGBT and Abortion

in Latin America

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | 

December 17, 2021

NEW YORK, December 17 (C-Fam) The UN human rights office has launched a new initiative to promote judicial activism on gender issues in Central and South America, including abortion and the LGBT agenda.

The UN human rights office established an organization to promote strategic litigation, legal reforms, and legal education on gender issues in Central and South America, regions where laws remain highly protective of children in the womb. While the organization, called the Latin American Network for Gender-based Strategic Litigation, focuses mostly on violence against women, it also promotes abortion as an international right following the recommendations of the UN human rights bodies.

The UN report on which the organization’s work is based describes “access to safe and legal abortion” as a human right and calls on advocates across Latin America to promote the denial of abortion as a criminal act of “reproductive violence.”

“To change laws, judicial practice, and the patriarchal culture that surrounds the investigation and punishment of crimes of sexual and gender based violence remains the central challenge,” said the coordinators of the group and American University professors Susana SáCouto and Claudia Martin in a blog.

The website of the organization promotes the rulings of Latin American courts promoting abortion as models to be followed, including controversial cases that have been dubbed judicial activism, or attempts by judges to impose their policy preferences in disregard of the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives.

Despite much international pressure, Central and Latin America remain stubbornly pro-life, and democratic votes as well as referendums on abortion tend to yield pro-life results. That is why abortion advocates and the governments who back them are turning more and more to the judiciary and law-enforcement, even if this technically is a form of interfering in the internal affairs of countries, something prohibited by the UN Charter.

The initiative of the UN human rights office is only the latest effort of the UN office and powerful western countries to train judges, lawyers, activists, and law-enforcement personnel in the region to promote abortion.

Several UN agencies have long promoted the notion that denial of abortion should be a crime under international law. Ongoing programs from the UN human rights office as well as other programs carried out in the region with money from western donors link gender-based violence with the enforcement of abortion laws.

According to a 2014 Latin American Model Protocol for the investigation of gender-related killings of women prepared by the UN agencies, “deaths due to unsafe or clandestine abortions” should be considered “passive or indirect category of femicides.”

What about the deaths of the children being aborted? Are they not infanticide?

The UN rights office and UN agencies run workshops in the region for legal and law-enforcement personnel every year, according to reports prepared by the UN human rights office. In Central America, the regional offices of the UN human rights bureaucracy routinely promote abortion. And internal evaluations of the UN human rights office praise the role of “gender advisors” within the UN bureaucracy for promoting abortion and the LGBT agenda in Latin America and across the world.

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US Air Force embraces gender pronouns

19 Dec, 2021 16:27

FILE PHOTO © Reuters / Shannon Stapleton

The US Air Force has authorized the use of gender pronouns in electronic signature boxes, further embracing the controversial woke lexicon that other branches of government were criticized for adopting earlier this year.

The military division authorized using gender pronouns in a piece of correspondence earlier this month, which was made public over the weekend. The document states that while the “use of pronouns (he/him, she/her, or they/them) in an email signature is authorized,” it is “not required.”

The signature block in Air Force email templates is otherwise restricted to name, rank, service affiliation, duty title, organization name, phone numbers, and social media contact information. Under the new rules, pronouns will be added to that list.

It’s unclear if there was a specific incident that provoked the move on behalf of the Air Force or if this was simply part of the US military’s onward march toward wokeness under President Joe Biden and his Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin, who has pledged to cleanse the military of “deep-rooted racism and discrimination.”

Biden’s pick to lead the Defense Department has ruffled some feathers in the military, as Austin has repeatedly suggested that some of the nation’s worst enemies “lie within our own ranks.” That image hasn’t improved with the department moving to dishonorably discharge those service members who choose not to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.

The Biden administration is determined to roll out the red carpet for LGBTQ recruits, running ads featuring a lesbian wedding and a Pride parade as well as ones featuring new military members describing themselves in ‘intersectional’ terms. Another video, this one the animated story of a real person, illustrated the upbringing of an army corporal with “two mommies.”

The administration’s embrace of woke-speak – especially gender pronouns – has attracted derision from political opponents. The State Department was mocked for celebrating ‘International Pronouns Day’ in October even as chaos seemingly broke loose around the world, from the ongoing failure to rescue Americans trapped in Afghanistan under Taliban rule to reports of China’s hypersonic missile launch. 

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‘Gender critical’ ex-cop wins free speech judgment

20 Dec, 2021 19:52

Police officers stand guard during a demonstration outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

October 28, 2021. © AFP / Tolga Akmen

A former police officer has scored a legal victory over a UK police policy that records “gender critical” views as “non-crime hate incidents,” after a court ruled it unlawfully interferes with the right to freedom of expression.

In January 2020, Harry Miller was visited by former colleagues at Humberside Police after a member of the public complained about his allegedly “transphobic” tweets. The complaint was designated as a non-crime hate incident and recorded on a national database.

On Monday, however, the Court of Appeal in London ruled that the guidance – issued by the College of Policing – had been unlawfully used, and noted it’d had a “chilling effect” on Miller’s freedom of speech. The presiding judges also found that, while the guidance had legitimate crime prevention purposes, those aims could be met through less intrusive means.

Following the verdict, Miller said that being offensive was one of the “cornerstones of freedom” and that it “is not, and cannot, and should not be an offence” unless “speech turns to malicious communication or targeted harassment against an individual.”

According to the guidance on hate crimes, a ‘non-crime hate incident’ can be “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice.”

The complaint against Miller was in relation to a number of his tweets about transgender issues as part of the debate about reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004. In one tweet, he reportedly wrote, “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.”

Last year, the High Court had upheld Miller’s challenge against Humberside Police’s actions, ruling that they were a “disproportionate interference” with his right to free expression. However, it dismissed his case against the guidance on the grounds that it “serves legitimate purposes and is not disproportionate.”

However, Justice Victoria Sharp said on Monday that the “recording of non-crime hate incidents is plainly an interference with freedom of expression” and that the “knowledge that such matters are being recorded and stored in a police database is likely to have a serious ‘chilling effect’ on public debate.”

Mr Miller belongs to a group of people who could easily be stigmatized for their opinions and be subject to complaints by those offended by his views.

After the ruling, Assistant Chief Constable Iain Raphael of the College of Policing said it had tried to strike a balance “between the need to protect vulnerable people and communities from harm with the need to facilitate and protect freedom of speech.”

This is a brilliant judgment, although if Miller was an active policeman I can see problems with it.

Illinois Governor Signs Law Letting Teen Girls Get an Abortion

without Parents Knowing

Michael Foust | 

ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor | 

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Saying he was “protecting reproductive rights,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law Friday that allows teenage girls to obtain an abortion without notifying their parents.

The new law, dubbed the “Youth Health and Safety Act” (HB 370), repeals a 1995 law that required minors to notify their parent or guardian 48 hours prior to having an abortion.

“With reproductive rights under attack across the nation, Illinois is once again establishing itself as a leader in ensuring access to healthcare services,” Pritzker said. “This repeal was essential, because it was the most vulnerable pregnant minors who were punished by this law: victims of rape and physical abuse in unsafe homes.”

Despite Pritzker’s reasoning, the 1995 law included an exception for victims of sexual abuse. It also allowed minors to petition for a court waiver if, for example, the minor came from an abusive home.

The new law’s legislative findings pointed to abortion restrictions in Mississippi and Texas and asserted that Illinois “again is called to be an example for the nation in the protection of reproductive health care” while also “working to establish healthy family communications, protecting the health and safety of youth including those who are pregnant and parenting, and investing in individuals throughout their lives.”

Of course, this law does the complete opposite. Communications breakdown between parents and children when one starts to lie to the other. This law encourages that to happen.

Supporters of the 1995 law, though, said the new law harms parent-child relationships.

“I am the father of a teenage girl. I love my daughter, and I care very deeply about what goes on in her life,” Jon Jones, a pastor at the Tinley Park campus of Christian Life Center in Illinois, said in urging legislators to back the ‘95 law. “If she were to get pregnant and consider an abortion, I would want to know so my wife and I could help her deal with the unexpected situation because we love her. We feel it is our duty to protect and guide her. We are family, and we deal with matters together. The state should not seek to interfere with our relationship.”

“The current law requiring that a parent or an adult family member be notified when a minor girl is seeking an abortion to us just makes common sense in a supportive family, which is the bedrock of society,” Jones said.

A March 2021 poll found that 72 percent of Illinois voters – including 58 percent of pro-choice voters – supported the parental notification law.

But, of course, the governor knows better!

The legislative findings of the 1995 law said, “the medical, emotional, and psychological consequences of abortion are sometimes serious and long-lasting, and immature minors often lack the ability to make fully informed choices that consider both the immediate and long-range consequences.”

The new law takes effect on January 1, 2024.

There's still time to reverse it!