..
Man abused by paedophile priest Malachy Finegan
to receive 'five-figure' payout
15 September, 2021 14:39
A MAN who claims a paedophile priest subjected him to sexual and physical abuse at a Co Down school is to receive a "five-figure" payout, his lawyer said.
The sum forms part of a resolution reached in his action centred on alleged historic assaults by the late Fr Malachy Finegan.
No admission of liability has been made in proceedings brought against the Trustees and Board of Governors at St Colman's College in Newry and the Diocese of Dromore.
But the plaintiff's solicitor, Kevin Winters, said: "This latest financial settlement highlights again the trail of emotional destruction left by Malachy Finegan."
Now aged in his mid sixties, the man sued over allegations he was targeted while boarding at the school as an 11-year-old pupil in the late 1960s.
At the High Court today, counsel for the plaintiff, who is not being named, announced that his claim for negligence has been settled on confidential terms.
Mr Justice McAlinden was told the defendants are to pay his costs as part of the resolution.
The case is one of a number of actions focused on the activities of Finegan. He taught and worked at St Colman's College from 1967 to 1987, spending the last decade as the school's president.
The priest, who died in 2002, was accused of a long campaign of child sexual abuse, but never prosecuted or questioned by police about claims made against him.
In 2018 it emerged that the Diocese of Dromore had settled a claim made by one of his alleged victims.
At that stage the Board of Governors at St Colman's condemned the physical, sexual and emotional abuse inflicted by Finegan while working there.
The priest's image was also removed from the school's photographs.
At the time the PSNI set up a team of detectives to investigate Finegan's activities.
Nine people were said to have been interviewed under caution, but no direction was made to prosecute anyone.
Of course, Irish and Northern Irish Justice tries their best to avoid prosecutions when they can.
Pope Francis urges European bishops gathering in Poland
to listen to sex abuse victims
By Euronews with AP •
Updated: 18/09/2021 - 17:14
Pope Francis said survivors must be treated as "companions and protagonists of a common future”
Pope Francis urged European bishops on Saturday to listen to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and consider them partners in reform.
In a video message aimed at Central and Eastern European bishops currently gathering in Poland for a four-day child protection conference, the supreme pontiff warned a failure to take victims' views into account could risk the future of the Catholic Church.
In Poland alone, about a dozen current and retired bishops have been sanctioned by the Vatican in recent months for failing to listen to victims, or take action against those who raped and molested them.
“Only by confronting the truth of this cruel behavior and humbly seeking forgiveness from victims and survivors," Francis said, "can the church find the way to once again be considered and trusted as a place of welcome and security for those who need it."
Repenting and humbly seeking forgiveness from God would be the appropriate place to start!
Bishops in particular, he said, must be the first to listen to victims, not the last, and must be at their service “seeing them as companions and protagonists of a common future.”
Many victims have said they were treated as enemies of the church when they reported their abuse, accused of seeking to cause scandal or extort the hierarchy for money.
Francis, and his predecessor Benedict XVI, have denounced what they called the hierarchy's misplaced concern for the church's reputation over the needs of victims.
Bid by Catholic church to stop child sexual abuse case
rejected by NSW supreme court
Church tried to stop a woman from suing, despite its own records showing
it knew the priest was a paedophile
who alleges she was sexually assaulted by Father Clarence Anderson in northern NSW in 1968.
Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP
Christopher Knaus
Fri 24 Sep 2021 21.00 BST
The Guardian
The Catholic church tried to stop a survivor suing it over the childhood abuse she suffered at the hands of a parish priest in northern New South Wales, despite its own records showing it knew the man was a paedophile but did nothing other than move him from parish to parish.
On Friday, the NSW supreme court rejected the Catholic church’s request for a permanent stay of proceedings brought by a woman who alleges she was sexually assaulted in 1968, when she was 14, by Father Clarence Anderson, a priest with the Lismore diocese.
The church had argued it could not possibly have a fair trial and that the case was “unjustifiably oppressive” due to the passage of time and the deaths of the priest and clergy with knowledge of the matter.
But church documents obtained by the woman’s lawyers, Ken Cush & Associates, show Anderson’s superiors had observed as early as 1965 that he had a “sexual interest in children”, which he was prepared to act on.
Other documents showed he was temporarily suspended from his office and told to undergo psychiatric treatment, which he did not persist with.
The court heard the church allowed Anderson to continue accessing children, moving him from parish to parish when complaints were made.
In early 1971, the archbishop of Brisbane’s office was directly warned about Anderson by the parish priest of Kyogle, Monsignor Ryan. Ryan said he had directly witnessed Anderson sexually assaulting a boy.
“These conclusions I reached from observation of him handling boys in the school playground and in his car,” he wrote to the archbishop’s office. “From the upper floor of the Presbytery I saw him on one occasion with a boy spreadeagled under him over the car bonnet, performing what seemed to be sexual movements upon the boy.”
Ryan told the archbishop he had also been approached by a father who said the priest had abused his son and six others. Anderson was stood down by Ryan, only for the monsignor to find out he had been “appointed to a Parish further down the coast, Macksville in fact, with the direction to go monthly to Sydney for treatment”.
The court found the documentary evidence “amply demonstrates that Father Anderson’s misconduct was well-known to his superiors, well before the event relied upon by the plaintiff”.
The woman’s lawyers also presented evidence from another five children who said they were abused by Anderson, including four children from Macksville.
One recalled that Anderson was known as “the surfing priest”. Some of the boys were coached by Anderson. Others were taken out by him shooting or surfing.
Justice Stephen Campbell found the church had not done enough to prove the “exceptional” circumstances required for a permanent stay of proceedings.
“A trial of the issues in this case would be no mere charade calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute amongst right-thinking people,” he said.
“I want to thank my legal team and especially thank the court for carefully considering my matter,” she said. “I am so pleased that I can continue to present my case and seek justice from the court.”
In 2017, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended that jurisdictions abolish time limitations to bringing abuse cases, prompting changes across the country, including in NSW.
Campbell noted that the removal of limitations showed parliament believed “child abuse actions should be permitted to proceed despite the effluxion of even long periods of time and an inevitable resulting degree of impoverishment of evidence, provided a fair, not perfect, trial can be had”.
The church was approached for comment.
It's hard to believe that this is still happening, where diocese are doing their utmost to prevent justice from happening for the victims of paedophile priests and irresponsible Bishops. Why did so many Bishops move paedo-priests around the country instead of reporting them to the police? Were priests so much more valuable than children, even when they are horrific sinners? Why don't paedophile priests and their sympathetic Bishops feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit for their evils? Do they really believe in God, or is it all just a game to them?
Survivors of sexual abuse by paedo-priests and evil Bishops can rest assured that justice will happen, maybe not in this world, but it will happen.
‘Most absolute of evils’: Investigation estimates up to 3,200
pedophile priests in French Catholic Church since 1950
3 Oct, 2021 08:36
FILE PHOTO: Service at a Catholic church in France, 2020. © Jean-Francois Monier / AFP
Up to 3,200 Catholic priests have sexually abused children in France in recent history, the head of an independent inquiry has said, days before publishing a report on the scope of crimes against minors inside the church.
The independent commission led by former vice president of the Council of State Jean-Marc Sauve was set up by the French Catholic Church in 2018 to study sexual crimes against minors within its ranks. After going through church archives across the country and conducting interviews, the commission, known by its acronym CIASE, will deliver a 2,500-page report on Tuesday.
Sauve told AFP his team had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 pedophile priests and other church members who operated since 1950. He added that it was “a minimum estimate.”
The most terrible thing for me was to see the most absolute of evils – an attack on the physical and mental integrity of children – which is to say a work of death perpetrated by people whose mission was to bring life and salvation.
“Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the church was completely indifferent to the victims. They didn’t exist, the suffering of children was ignored,” Sauve told Le Journal du Dimanche on Saturday, adding that clerics were greatly interested in protecting the church and retaining offenders in the priesthood.
Europe 1 radio cited sources saying that the estimated number of potential victims mentioned in the report will be well over 100,000. This is 10 times higher than the previous estimate put forward by the commission in March.
And in my estimation, a lot closer to the truth!
The Catholic Church across the world has been rocked by numerous high-profile cases involving the sexual abuse of minors by priests in recent decades.
The Vatican toughened its laws against sex offenders in the clergy this year in response to a 2020 independent report finding that senior church officials had failed to act on reports of crimes against children in the past.
'In the past' - like last week!
No comments:
Post a Comment